All of you haters can whinge and complain all you want, but Doc Rivers has the Clippers at 0.646 as one of the top 6 teams in the NBA with their top scorer (and arguably best player) out of the lineup.
I'd like to see how well the Cavs, Warriors, Spurs and Raptors would do if they went for an extended period of time without Lebron, Curry, Leonard and Lowry. I suspect they would do nowhere near as well as the Clippers have done without Griffin...and aside from Paul who else do they have on their roster? DeAndre Jordan is great at what he does but extremely limited at everything else. Reddick is a good shooter but not much else. Paul Pierce and Crawford are over the hill. Lance Stephenson and Josh Smith - not much to say there.
Without Blake that team is basically Chris Paul, Deandre Jordan and parts.
People have irrational hatred towards Doc - I don't get it. If you don't like him as a person then that's your prerogative. He is a good coach whether you like it or not, and whining about him like a toddler that just lost it's chocolate bar isn't going to change that.
He was here, he coached some very challenging personalities (Perk, Rondo, KG) to a championship in 2008, and he continued to keep the team extremely competitive through the years that followed despite having to manage more injuries than almost any other team in the league.
The team was good when he was here, now he's gone and the team is good again. Let it go.
Blake is the Clippers best player? I wonder what Chris Paul thinks about that,
As far as the roster, do you have any idea who constructed that roster? Yeah Rivers did.
A good coach would have won multiple chips with the Big Three. plus Rondo.
1) I didn't say Griffin is their best player. I said he is their best scorer and 'arguably' their best player. Personally I think CP3 is their best player overall, but the argument for Griffin could definitely be made if somebody wanted to make it strongly enough. The two are close enough on talent that you could argue either way.
2) Doc did a solid enough job of constructing the roster with what was available on the market. Unfortunately Crawford fell off a cliff, Pierces fell off a cliff (after a solid year last year), Josh Smith fell off a cliff (after playing well last year for the Rockets) and Stephenson was a fair gamble after the way he played in Indiana a few seasons back. Doc added pieces that were good pieces at the time, who simply aren't good pieces now - and there was no way he could predict Griffin's injury.
3) That's just silly. Boston had injuries to key starters every single year after 2008, and this directly impacted their ability to win a title. They made the finals in 2009 and were looking like favourites to win until Perk went down - after which the Lakers size killed us in the last couple of games. Every year after that we had major injuries - KG lost for the playoffs, Rondo lost for a season, Pierce and Ray with major injuries, Jermaine Oneal lost for a season, Shaq lost to a season, Krstic lost to a season. We were so injury depleted one year that we had Big Baby and an ancient Rasheed Wallace playing critical roles.
In some 5 years as our coach in the big 3 era we won a title, made the finals twice, made the ECF a couple of times, and were generally considered to be one of the most dominant teams in the league until Doc's final year (when Rondo went down, and Pierce/KG were too old to carry the team).
For goodness sake, we made it to the ECF with Pierce and Ray playing injured, and with a bench that included Marquis Daniels, Keeyon Dooling, E'Twaun Moore, Chris Wilcox and Ryan Hollins - then with that Roster (and no AB - who missed the series) we pushed the eventual champion Miami Heat to 7 games...in a series that many predicted would be a Miami Heat sweep.
Not even Popovich could get past the ECF with that squad...neither could Brad Stevens. Doc made the absolute best of what little talent he had available and almost knocked off the best team in the NBA. That speaks volumes about his ability as a coach.
