NBA veteran point guard Patrick Beverley has made a habit out of beefing with fellow players, and his latest victim isn’t even active in the NBA today. Speaking on his podcast, Beverley doubled down on his internet war with JJ Redick, who went viral this week after calling out his former coach, Doc Rivers. According to Bev, he doesn’t appreciate JJ selling out his former coach like that, especially since Doc helped to add success to his career.
“Getting thrown in the fire in the middle of the season, that’s really not natural for a coach. Obviously it’s natural for players,” said Beverley. “And you go accountability, should Doc be held accountable for playing you [JJ] in that 3-1 series when we [Rockes] walked y’all *ss down 3-1? Should he be accountable and be like, ‘let me get JJ Redick off of James Harden.’ If I’m being honest, should’ve started Jamal Crawford.”
A few hours later, Redick came up with a response, pulling out the receipts to correct Beverley’s “error”: “Luckily the cameras in the arena have better eyes than you,” wrote JJ on X. “289 halfcourt matchups 21-56 shooting by Harden as contesting defender 37.5% FG (42.9% eFG) 0.94 points per direct iso allowed on 37 isolations I guess that’s getting torched???”
As a bit of an NBA journeyman, Patrick Beverley has made the rounds over the past few years, and his latest stop just so happens to be with Doc Rivers and the new-look Bucks. So while it’s no surprise that Bev has come out to defend his coach here, his back-and-forth with JJ has picked up a lot more steam than anyone predicted.
The whole thing started earlier this month when Doc Rivers was hired as the replacement for Adrian Griffin. Despite doubts and questions from the fans, the Bucks wasted no time in bringing him on but the results have been anything but positive so far.
In fact, the Bucks are worse now than they ever were under Adrian Griffin and there’s a growing sense that they may have moved too fast with their recent coaching changes. At just 3-7 in their last 10 games, Milwaukee is in a bad state right now and Rivers is at the center of it all after taking over just a few weeks ago.
Does Doc Rivers Have Accountability Issues?
While Giannis seems happy enough working with Rivers, that hasn’t been the case for all of his former players. JJ Redick once played under Rivers and had a lot of success with him on the Clippers before eventually parting ways.
So when JJ came in and accused Rivers of having “zero accountability” it said a lot about how the iconic coach is perceived in some NBA circles. Throughout history, Rivers has led some of the worst collapses in playoff history and he has always blamed everyone but himself.
On the Clippers, Rivers had a chance to win the title with Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, and Deandre Jordan but they ultimately failed, allegedly due to Rivers. After taking a job with the 76ers, Doc was tasked to help Joel Embid win his first championship… but it was always one disaster after another there as the team regularly blew playoff series leads year after year.
Now, with the Bucks, we are seeing in real-time how difficult it can be for a coach to implement his game plan mid-season. But if Doc wants to kill all the narratives and put down his demons once and for all, then he’s going to need total buy-in from the Bucks and that’s something that will take time to develop over the next few weeks and months.
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