FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Sports

Reporter Asks About Clock Management, Doc Rivers: "That Is Like the Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard"

There's a fine line between being a reporter and being a punk-ass backseat coach, and Doc Rivers was happy to draw it last night.

Doc Rivers goes off when he's asked if he considered running the clock down for the final shot down two pic.twitter.com/IGs09Hm4RZ
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) April 16, 2017

There's a fine line between being a reporter and being a punk-ass backseat coach, and Doc Rivers was happy to draw it last night. One reporter asked Rivers about how the No. 4 Clippers should've run the clock last night in their last-second loss to the No. 5 Utah Jazz in the Western, and Doc was not feeling it.

Advertisement

At the end of a thrilling back-and-forth that witnessed a Clippers comeback from a seven-point deficit, they found themselves with the ball and 18.7 seconds left on the clock, two points down. Chris Paul found a lane and drove for a tidy little bank off the glass. The only problem was that there were 13 seconds left in the game. The Jazz's Joe Johnson decided to take a one-on-one drive and kind of dinked it in, with the grace of the back of the rim buying him some time to make it an actual buzzer beater. The Jazz ended up taking it 97-95, and the woulda, coulda, shouldas came marching out for the Clippers.

So one reporter decided to ask one of those Hindsight 20/20 questions to Doc Rivers in the press conference afterwards, and this was how he responded:

Who would do that? Why would you ever do that? So if you miss, the game is over. That makes no sense. That is like the dumbest thing I've ever heard. When you're down two, you try to score. You don't wait. No, you score. If you can score in one second you score.

It makes sense: you need a bucket no matter what. Rivers is out here slapping up some reporter for toe-ing the line. And as well he should have.