Doc Rivers chokes again

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John K
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Doc Rivers chokes again

Post by John K » Sun May 14, 2023 9:02 pm

Doc Rivers choked again. How that guy still has a coaching job in the NBA is completely beyond my comprehension. Sixers had a 3 games to 2 lead, lost at home in game 6, then got blown out by 24 points in game 7 by the Celtics. I won a $5 bet with a buddy, and I almost feel bad about taking his money. Betting against Doc in a game 7 is the closest you can get to a sure thing with a sports bet. The only way it could be more of a sure thing is if you had the coach and several players from one of the teams in your pocket, and all of the officials too. No other NBA coach has ever blown a 3 games to 1 lead more than once. Doc has done it 3 times. He is 6-10 in game 7's, including 5 straight losses. His 10 game 7 losses are twice as many as any other coach. He's now 18-32 in potential close out games, which also gives him more close out losses than any anyone else, by far. He won a championship 15 years ago with 3 HOF players in the prime of their careers, and has managed to dupe several other teams into hiring him since then, even though he hasn't done s**t in the playoffs since then. He hasn't even taken a team as far as the conference finals since 2012, while still with the Celtics. After this latest flop, he should be lucky to get a job coaching a middle school girl's team somewhere.

edit: He's actually 17-33 in close out games, not 18-32.
Last edited by John K on Sun May 14, 2023 10:07 pm, edited 3 times in total.



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Bobcat4Ever
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Re: Doc Rivers chokes again

Post by Bobcat4Ever » Sun May 14, 2023 9:09 pm

Perhaps his teams overachieve a bit during the regular season, and just don’t have the horsepower in the playoffs. It’s not like ‘Bron is on his side.



John K
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Re: Doc Rivers chokes again

Post by John K » Sun May 14, 2023 10:14 pm

Oh give me a break. He's almost always had at least two superstars on the teams he's coached. Kawhi Leonard and Paul George with the Clippers, and Joel Embid and James Harden on the Sixers, etc. His teams choke late in games too. They led the Celtics by 2 in game 6, then got outscored 14-3 in the final 6 minutes. In game 7 they only trained by 3 at halftime, then got outscored 33-10 in the 3rd quarter. When the Clippers blew a 3 games to 1 lead in the 2020 playoffs, they had a double digit lead in the 2nd half of games 5, 6 and 7, but lost all 3.



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Bobcat4Ever
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Re: Doc Rivers chokes again

Post by Bobcat4Ever » Sun May 14, 2023 11:05 pm

Okay, not too shiny! But those organizations aren’t exactly world beaters as I remember. I suspect they are happy with who I assume is a budget coach. I dint follow the NBA much anymore, if Steph and Klay aren’t playing. I mainly remember Doc as a player.



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coloradocat
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Re: Doc Rivers chokes again

Post by coloradocat » Mon May 15, 2023 7:49 am

Doc, Embid and Harden are the Choke Three. I can't believe a GM thought that three guys known to shrink in the playoffs would be a good nucleus for a team.


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John K
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Re: Doc Rivers chokes again

Post by John K » Mon May 15, 2023 12:58 pm

Bobcat4Ever wrote: Okay, not too shiny! But those organizations aren’t exactly world beaters as I remember. I suspect they are happy with who I assume is a budget coach. I dint follow the NBA much anymore, if Steph and Klay aren’t playing. I mainly remember Doc as a player.
He's choked at every stop during his coaching career. going back 20 years. With Orlando in 2003, they led Detroit 3 games to 1, and then lost each of the last three games by more than 20 points. How do you go from winning 3 out of 4, to losing by 20 plus in three straight games? Even with the Celtics, while he did win a championship with three HOF players in the prime of their careers, he should have won at least one more. They led the Lakers 3 games to 2 in the 2010 Finals, before losing the last two games. In game 7, they had a 15 point lead midway through the 4th quarter. At that point, the game should have been over and the Celtics should have had another banner, but no lead is safe with Doc at the helm. And he always has an excuse for his choke jobs. After that one, he blamed the loss on Kendrick Perkins' injury. To hear him talk, you would have thought Perkins was like Wilt, Kareem, Shaq, and Russell, all rolled up into one.

It drives me crazy, that all the sports talking heads look for every excuse in the book to avoid calling him out for his failures. Today they're all blaming Embid and Harden. Granted, they didn't play well, and if it was just one team or one group of players that he spit the bit with, then maybe you could say it wasn't all on him, but it's happened with 4 different teams, with lots of different star players. Plug in any pair of superstars you want to, Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, Joel Embid and James Harden. At some point, don't you have to say that it's Doc, not the players? He's the only common denominator in all those brutal playoff collapses. You don't have to be a basketball genius to look at a mountain of evidence and come to the only logical conclusion. The Sixers should have fired him already. If they don't dump his sorry *** after this latest choke job, then they deserve what they get, and they'll never get a sniff of the NBA finals, let alone actually winning a title.

He's the Jeff Fisher of the NBA. Fisher built a long coaching career in the NFL, based upon that one year the Titans got to the Super Bowl and lost to the Rams, early in his career. Other than that one season, he won a grand total of two playoff games, with only 6 winning seasons, in 21 years as a head coach.



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