A Confusing Journey

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One of the biggest stories in the NBA right now is Doc Rivers leaving the Boston Celtics to coach the Los Angeles Clippers. Not much has been made about how he left, in fact most are giving him a pass except ESPN’s Bill Simmons, a die hard Celtics fan and oddly enough a Clippers season ticket holder. Like many fans, Simmons thinks that Rivers quit on the Celtics rather than face a rebuilding phase, he still had three years left of a five-year contract he signed two years ago. This came to a head on draft night last Thursday when an ESPN reported who was interviewing Rivers asked for his thoughts on Simmons comments about how he had left the Celtics. Rivers responded by saying “I’d like to call him an idiot, but I’m too classy for that”. He then went on to say that Simmons didn’t know what was going on. Simmons responded by saying that Doc wasn’t being straight with anyone telling multiple stories about the whole scenario.

 

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“ Doc, if you were so classy, you wouldn’t have made the statements about wanting to call him an idiot”

Living in world of social media, instant responses come very fast, you knew there was going to be a response from someone, that backlash came from little heard of Jeremiah Rivers, Doc’s son. Through a series of tweets the younger Rivers tried to discredit Simmons’ stances by throwing out facts about his father’s past, and telling Simmons that he knew nothing about winning, and that he was “just an internet bully”. Simmons wasn’t the first or will he be the last to criticize the way Rivers handled this move, but he may be the loudest due to his platform at ESPN, or at least till Skip Bayless gets back.

Being that stereo typical Bostonians aren’t afraid to tell you what’s on their mind it’s surprising to me that most are giving Doc a pass. For me Doc and his son’s responses legitimize Simmons thoughts and because of how vehemently the responses were I think there is at least some truthfulness to the thought that Rivers quit on the Celtics.

The whole journey of Doc going to the Clippers stinks to me. He clearly didn’t want to go through another rebuilding stage, and in an interview with Dan Patrick listed not having to rebuild as a positive to coaching the Clippers. There are many other inaccuracies to the stories he has told to different sources about how the whole thing happened. What gets me is how he prefaced his comments about Simmons. Doc should know by now that when you preface your comments is almost always a dead give away meaning “everything I just said is a lie”. Think back, you’ve heard people say things like “I usually don’t kiss and tell, but…” or “I usually don’t gossip but…..”  or “I usually don’t tell people this, but…” or  “no offense, but” or “I don’t usually drink beer, but when I do its Dos Equis”. These are examples of prefaced statements. When others preface their statements I always pay attention to hear what they actually do or don’t do and I ignore what ever they say after the preface. Doc, if you were so classy, you wouldn’t have made the statements about wanting to call him an idiot, you would have kept it at “that’s his opinion” or “no comment”. Doc’s agent was cringing in the corner listening to that segment.

So what really happened in Boston? We may never know, but between what has come out, what Doc and said and his response to criticism from other that He did in fact quit on the Celtics and chose to force them to trade him to the Clippers. If he were LeBron he would be universally hated for it, but for some reason he is getting a huge pass from the media.