Credit: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports
Austin Rivers Fires Back In Brutal Response After JJ Redick Criticised His Former Coach Doc Rivers
After former NBA shooting guard, turned analyst, JJ Redick blasted his former coach Doc Rivers on national television, his son Austin later came to his defense with a message of his own on NBA Today.
"For someone who's not accountable, he always seems to be held responsible considering he's the guy who's always fired when things don't go right," said Rivers. "It's just weird coming from JJ because his best years were with the Clippers. In terms of accountability, your best years in the NBA were when you played for him and the Clippers. I don't know if it's frustration there or tension there because we had to sit you at the end of the game due to defensive reasons It's just very ironic and kinda weird that you have this energy towards him."
While it's no surprise that Austin is defending his father here, he's not wrong in what he said about JJ's career. Doc Rivers helped Redick maximize his game in Los Angeles and they worked together to achieve some great seasons there. Despite this, Redick recently went on First Take and called him out for a lack of accountability.
"The trend is always making excuses," said Redick. "Taking over a team in the middle of a season is hard... it's always an excuse. It's always throwing your team under the bus... there's never accountability with that guy."
Doc has been steadily losing popularity after his breakup with the Celtics years ago. All of the teams he has coached since then have suffered crushing playoff losses, often in the form of choking away a 2-1 or even 3-1 series leads. It remains to be seen how he will perform with the Bucks for the rest of this campaign but this may very well be his last opportunity to lead an NBA locker room.
Did The Bucks Make A Mistake Hiring Doc?
The Bucks don't have the patience to wait for the pieces to fall into place. With Giannis and Lillard in their primes, the time to win is now and the Bucks have already taken drastic measures to increase their odds of winning a title this season.
Unfortunately, the move for Doc Rivers hasn't panned out like the team had hoped and the Bucks are losing ground in the Eastern standings. On pretty much every front, the Bucks have regressed as a unit and the early signs are not looking good a all.
While some fans are questioning if Doc Rivers is the right coach for the team, others are questioning why they fired Adrian Griffin in the first place. Apparently, even Doc himself was one of the ones who doubted the decision to change coaches as the 2nd seed in the East and now it's got everyone thinking they made a huge mistake.
But what's done is done now and there's no going back to erase the past. For Doc, there is no easy way out, and until he can get his team back in the right place there will always be some level of resentment for how he took over and inherited an empire only to make it worse.
For Giannis and company, much of them have already proven they can win at the highest level but maybe it's time to stop blaming the coaches and blame themselves for how they've played over the past 8 months.
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