Doc Rivers led the Boston Celtics to the NBA title in 2008, but he nearly turned down the job when it was offered to him. In a clip for an upcoming episode of KG Certified, Rivers shared how Danny Ainge, the then-president of basketball operations for the Celtics, convinced him to take the job.
“I was gonna turn down the Celtics job,” Rivers said. “Because I had just left Orlando, I wanted a year, and Danny calls me and says, ‘Hey, can we talk?’ I said, ‘Yeah, when?’ He said, ‘Now.’ I said, ‘What do you mean now?’ He said, ‘Look outside your window.’ Danny just flew all the owners up to Orlando without asking me. He’s ringing the doorbell. So, he comes in, and we’re sitting there, and I’m like, ‘What the hell?’ It’s a boss move, it was cool.”
While that was a cool move, there was something else that followed which made Rivers realize he should take it.
“We’re sitting there and we’re talking about college players, and I said, ‘I tell you the guy I love, kid at Oklahoma State, Tony Allen,’ and the owners started laughing because Danny had just said that and then that made me say, ‘Oh man, we’re connected.’”
Doc Rivers almost didn’t coach the Celtics. 😳
NEW episode of #KGCertified with @DocRivers drops on the All The Smoke Productions YouTube Friday.
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Rivers said a lot of teams might have stayed away from a player like Allen, but the fact that the Celtics weren’t meant they were on the same page. He changed his mind and decided he would sign with them, and became their head coach in 2004.
Success didn’t come instantly, however. The Celtics were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs in his first season and they missed the postseason entirely in his next two. The roster wasn’t a very talented one to be fair to him, but Ainge would change that in 2007.
He pulled off blockbuster trades for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to form a Big 3 with Paul Pierce, and the Celtics took off. They went 66-16 in 2007-08 and would go on to beat the Los Angeles Lakers in six games in the NBA Finals to clinch the franchise’s 17th title.
Rivers would lead the Celtics to the Finals again in 2010, but this time they lost to the Lakers in seven games. It would be the last time the Celtics made the Finals under Rivers, as a new dominant team emerged in the East, the Miami Heat.
By the time 2013 came around, Boston was entering a rebuild. So, Rivers decided to leave for the Los Angeles Clippers via trade, having amassed a 416-305 record in his nine seasons with the Celtics.
Doc Rivers Regrets Leaving The Celtics
Rivers would go on to have some success as head coach of the Clippers and then the Philadelphia 76ers, but the ultimate prize eluded him. When he returned to TD Garden last month to be honored with the Basketball Legacy award at The Tradition, Rivers admitted he regrets leaving.
“I regret it every day,” Rivers admitted. “It was the right move for me at the time. Nine years at one place. We were going to rebuild. I look back on that all the time. My life would have been so much smoother if I had stayed where I was at. … You don’t look back and I don’t, but I regret that at times, for sure.”
He would have only had a rough season or two had he stayed, as the Celtics would land the likes of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum in the years that followed. By 2016-17, Boston was back in the Conference Finals and they’ve since been one of the best teams in the league. Would they have won a title had Rivers still been there? Well, we’ll never know.
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