There were practically tremors in the basketball world (location, Boston) when the notion surfaced before the playoffs about the possibility of Rivers' stepping aside next season.
Paul Pierce was asked about just that Monday.
"I hadn't really thought about that. Are you concerned I'm going to leave?" Pierce responded.
Now that would be quite a headline to kick off the Finals.
One of the lines of questioning with Pierce had to do with Rivers' stabilizing force as coach, the ability to stay unruffled when things were at their darkest for the Celtics in an injury-riddled second half of the season.
"You can see, at times, you play for coaches when things aren't going right," Pierce said. "Practices get harder and yelling becomes louder.
"Doc is a cool customer. He didn't panic. He didn't get louder. He just stuck with the game plan. A lot of times when you go through a stretch we went through -- we lost five games out of six, seven out of 10, you kind of tell through a coach's body language that things are going [poorly] ... you never really saw that with Doc."
--LA TIMES
He won't win it. But, all things considered, most of those things of recent vintage, he deserves to win it.
No comments:
Post a Comment