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Patrick Beverley, currently a member of the Israeli Basketball Premier League’s Hapoel Tel Aviv, said Monday on his podcast that he believes Doc Rivers has become a very underrated head coach.
“They trying to slander Doc,” he said. “I seen some coaching rankings, they had Doc No. 22, dawg. I almost threw my f–king phone. This man… Phil Jackson is Doc Rivers. They got to put more respect on my coach’s name. They got to. They got to, bro. It’s getting disrespectful. They wouldn’t do Phil Jackson like that. Why are they doing Doc like that? It’s wild.”
The comparison between Rivers and Jackson is well out of pocket.
Jackson won 11 titles as a head coach of the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers, and might have won more if Michael Jordan didn’t take a brief hiatus from the game for baseball or if Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal could have squashed their beef. He is one of the greatest coaches in NBA history.
Rivers, meanwhile, has won one title as a head coach and hasn’t so much as reached the conference finals since the 2011-12 season despite having players like Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Joel Embiid and James Harden at his disposal. He’s a very good coach, no doubt, but putting him in the elite tier in NBA history is beyond a stretch.