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Jason Smith: “What amazes me is Doc Rivers has found a way to underachieve and never be someone who the media and the fans point their finger at. He has had two incredibly talented rosters with the Clippers. The first with DeAndre Jordan, Blake Griffin, and Chris Paul, and you couldn’t get out of the second round of the playoffs. Now here we are re-doing it with Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, and the best bench, and you’re struggling in the first round… Nobody questions him. Any other team with this kind of talent who fails, the coach is the guy who people go ‘he’s got to do a better job.’ Doc has found a way over the course of his career to be able to avoid ALL of that. Yes, he’s got the title with the Celtics, but since then he has underachieved. You can compare the Clippers' last few years almost identically with the last few years of the 76ers -- and Brett Brown was fired. Two 50-win teams who don’t win quite as much as you think they should during the regular season, and never get out of the first or second round of the playoffs. Brown gets fired and Doc Rivers gets a pass. I don’t get it, and many of the coaches around the league are going ‘boy, I wish I could be like Doc and underachieve and still have a great reputation.’” (Full Segment Above)
Listen to Jason Smith explain why he thinks Clippers coach Doc Rivers should be lambasted more by the NBA media, as Rivers’ Clippers have arguably been the league’s biggest underachievers the last decade, including a surprisingly tight 2 vs. 7-seed first round matchup with the Mavericks at the Bubble.
Rivers won an NBA Finals championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008, but in six seasons with a loaded Clippers roster from 2013-2019, the team never advanced past the second round of the playoffs, was knocked out in the first round three times, and missed the playoffs twice.
Check out the audio above as Smith details why he thinks Rivers’ has strangely flown under the radar the last seven seasons as the league’s least criticized underachiever.
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