re: Pelicans reached out the Doc Rivers

Do we know if it is true that our front office attempted forcing its ideas on Gentry?

Doc doesn't seem to fit the mold of a coach who would essentially be a puppet of the front office with lineups, etc.

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Do we know if it is true that our front office attempted forcing its ideas on Gentry?

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Gentry was basically being set up to fail by the team being so cautious with Zion and asking him to play kids over vets like Moore.

After Gentry got fired one of the national guys characterized one of Gentry's earlier pressers about Zion not playing as "he seemed like he felt he was saving him for the next coach." I think being a lame duck/on the hot seat coach had a lot to do with any tension between Gentry and Griff.

Whoever becomes the new coach should have a cool enough seat that they'll be ok letting the kids develop some and they'll most likely agree to those kinds of things up front when taking the job. Uncle Al just wasn't part of the team's future and he knew it.

If Doc could bring in free agents that would do it for me!

I mean I think between Griff and Doc you would have as much FA reputation points as any coach we could bring in, but Pop is arguably the GOAT and they basically rarely bothered with the FA hustle for big name stars because its so overwhelmingly tilted toward the glamour markets.

But I’d be happy to be wrong.

Success for the Lakers this year was always expected. The gamble the Pels made is that the Lakers would lack the assets and financial flexibility to adequately replace LeBron as his skills declined.

I don't really want Doc. I wouldn't hate it but he wouldn't be my first choice. He won a ring with the big 3 or 4 in Boston. He underwhelmed with his big 3 in LAC but that was also during the Warriors run. He exceeded expectations last season and should have won COY if not for Giannis and Buds winning 60 games. This year I don't think it was his coaching that lost them that series. Sure they blew some big leads, but there were way too many self absorbed players on those teams. PG was depressed and couldn't throw it in the ocean. Murray and Joker were on a damn mission and couldn't be stopped. They didn't have anyone that could slow down Joker.

I'm not sure if I am talking myself into Doc with this post haha. I'd still like to get an interview with the Assisstant in Miami who followed Spo's footsteps. So I guess that guy and Doc would be my top two.

I just pulled this from his wikipedia page:

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On September 15, 2020, following a 104–89 defeat to the Denver Nuggets in Game 7 of the Western Conference Semifinals, Doc Rivers became the first coach in NBA history whose teams three times failed to advance from a best of seven series after taking a 3–1 lead.[20] Rivers had previously been the only coach in NBA history whose teams had twice failed to advance from a best of seven series after taking a 3–1 lead.

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I think if you dig into and dispassionately contextualize his playoff loses with the Clippers, his record there isn’t quite as bad as the basic stats indicate. People have a tendency in sports especially, to gloss over the context and details over time and only look at things from a 500 mile up vantage and judge from there. And in this case I think it leads to some lazy analysis.

- First season Doc took them to the semis, lost to a good OKC team.

- In 15 they lose 4-3 in the semis to a 56 win Rockets team after losing CP for 2 games due to injury and coming from a brutal SA series in the first round. However, admittedly, this one is a bit of a blight because CP missed games 1 and 2 and LAC stole a win and they went up 3-1 and Hou went on a tear and LAC failed to match. Criticism is warranted here. Even with a banged up CP3.

- In 16 BOTH Griffin and CP3 go down with injury in game 4 of the first round(up 2-1 at that point). That series then featured a Clippers starting lineup of Jamal Crawford, Austin Rivers, Jordan, Reddick, and the shell of the player once known as Paul Pierce.

- In 17 Blake Griffin goes down again in the first round. They lose 4-3 over a very good Jazz team.

- CP3 gets traded, followed by Griffin, Clips miss the playoffs but manage 42 wins despite a horrible roster.

- 19 season Doc over performs expectations and gets into the first round with a rag tag team and steals two from the Warriors.

Now I’ve said before that I don’t put Doc in the elite category, more toward the back end of the next tier, and some of the criticism is warranted(including adjacent criticism about how Doc the GM often set up Doc the coach for failure, which thankfully shouldn’t be an issue as he would not have that control here), but I think if Griff went this route we would end up with a team that plays hard, regularly gets to the playoffs, and if healthy can travel further than the current coaching record would indicate. Now in a perfectly even match up where our team and the other team has relative player parity and the other team features an elite head coach? I think we would come up short and that could be a real long term problem. But the thing is the statistical probability of any of the potential first time coaches we are fawning over to end up in that tier is incredibly small. Ending up in the Doc tier only slightly more likely, which is to say, overall, very unlikely.

And to bloat things a bit more, I think the even deeper context in Doc’s Clippers days has to do with his absolutely piss poor GM’ing. Which was really unforgivable and it’s likely a good reason why between him and Thibs this GM/HC experiment is largely over in the league.

I mean just look at this list for example:



Followed that up by signing and resigning a bunch of bad to mediocre bench players like Paul Pierce, Jeff Green, Wesley Johnson, and signing Austin Rivers to that ridiculous 11 million a year extension. Traded away or blew most of their first round draft picks. Worst probably being 2016 where they chose Brice Johnson when the BPA’s that were right next to them and subsequently selected included: Pascal Siakam, Dejoante Murray, and Furkam Korkmaz, Essentially, in totality, hamstringing their depth and role player quality through most of their runs. I’m not sure it would materially change the outcomes, but it adds to context for why things often went the way they did.

And that’s partly my point going further on that.

Doc the GM really set up Doc the coach for a lot of unnecessary hardships.

I’d have to imagine if he had a quality GM like Griff he might have had the arsenal to close out Hou or weather a Griffin injury better. Have the depth to keep his guys healthier during the regular season and going into the post season.

I definitely lean towards a younger guy.

But there would be some positives for Doc, big time. He could be the guy before the guy, that lends some serious credibility to the organization. He can instill culture and get our guys used to winning and getting to the playoffs.

Then you hire the guy to take you to the next level. After your 3rd 2nd round exit.