Chris Paul: Doc Told Me "I'm Nothing"

http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/10/01/chris-paul-doc-rivers-told-me-im-nothing/?ocid=Yahoo&partner=ya5nbcs


Chris Paul: Doc Rivers told me I’m nothing
Dan Feldman Oct 1, 2013, 9:45 AM EDT



I can’t stand the championship-or-bust ethos in the NBA.

Plenty of great players have never won titles, and many more bad players have. Of course, championships should remain a piece of the puzzle when evaluating players, but only a piece and definitely not the largest piece.

The same issue exists on a team level, too. I just don’t accept that only one team succeeds and the other 29 fail each each season.

However, I see why Doc Rivers disagrees.

The value placed on championships has treated Rivers’ well. Without his 2008 title coaching the Celtics, Rivers probably doesn’t have a $7 million-per-year contract and probably can’t force his way from a rebuilding team to a contender.

Rivers is a good coach, but his championship took his career to a new level. Now, he’s trying to use the title to take Chris Paul and the Clippers to a new level.

Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports:

Chris Paul’s NBA résumé is highlighted with several elite individual accomplishments. But that didn’t stop new Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers from letting his star point guard know in their first face-to-face meeting that he’s lacking one major prize.An NBA championship.”As professional athletes, you always want someone to push you and motivate you,” Paul said. “The first meeting I had with Doc, he pretty much told me I wasn’t anything. He told me I hadn’t done anything in this league, and he was right. You don’t always want somebody that’s going to tell you what you want to hear.”

Rivers, because of his championship, has the cache to speak to Paul that way. If Rivers hadn’t won a title himself, even if he possessed the exact same coaching ability but hadn’t been blessed with as good of players, there’s no way Paul would accept such a message.The rest of Spears’ article contains quotes from Paul and Rivers gushing about each other, so their relationship is clearly in a good place.If Rivers can use this ridiculous criticism to push Paul, that’s great. But make no mistake: the criticism is ridiculous.Paul is the NBA’s best point guard, and he shouldn’t need a championship to keep that title.


bob
MY NOTE:  So, I guess that means he thinks Dr. J is nothing.  And Moses Malone.  And Stockton and Karl Malone.  And Pistol Pete. I could go on and on and on here, but Darko, who won a championship with the Pistons in 2004, has accomplished something in this league (per Doc).  Boy, it's a good thing Danny, whom Doc has such a big problem with now, was able to pull off not one, but two separate blockbuster trades for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett and did it the same year so as to take advantage of that small window of opportunity.  If he hadn't, that'd mean that Doc would probably be nothing too, since no Ray or no KG would mean no championship for Doc.  And all these years, Rondo's been getting the rep for being a "coach killer", even though he has had only one coach in his entire NBA career, and the coach he had was one that is now telling probably the best point guard in the league that "he's nothing".


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Bob,

Not that I'm arguing your overall point, but Dr. J and Moses did win the title in 1983.

I don't see this as that big of deal. Doc is just setting the agenda -- winning the title. He's getting across to his best player and leader that everything Doc's doing is focused on winning the title. He's challenging his best player and leader to be focused on that as well and communicate that to the rest of the team. Doc is going to ask his players to make sacrifices, and he needs Paul on board with his agenda.

Titles count for a lot, but the argument that only players who have won a title have accomplished anything is bogus. But there's nothing wrong with Doc setting the bar at winning a title. The writer tries to portray this as Doc being disrespectful to Paul, but that's not what's going on here.

Outside wrote:Bob,

Not that I'm arguing your overall point, but Dr. J and Moses did win the title in 1983.

I don't see this as that big of deal. Doc is just setting the agenda -- winning the title. He's getting across to his best player and leader that everything Doc's doing is focused on winning the title. He's challenging his best player and leader to be focused on that as well and communicate that to the rest of the team. Doc is going to ask his players to make sacrifices, and he needs Paul on board with his agenda.

Titles count for a lot, but the argument that only players who have won a title have accomplished anything is bogus. But there's nothing wrong with Doc setting the bar at winning a title. The writer tries to portray this as Doc being disrespectful to Paul, but that's not what's going on here.

outside,

You're right about Dr. J and Moses. I had my blood up and wasn't doing my research first.

I understand that Doc is trying to get CP3 to focus on winning the championship, I understand this is just a mind game, but the secret to playing effective mind games is to not make them ridiculously obvious. Anybody who can't see this as a mind game is open to buying a bridge in Brooklyn too.


bob


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I think the writer is the one who is making this into a mind game. My sense is that Doc is being open and transparent with Paul, not manipulative. This is the writer taking a throwaway line and trying to make something out of it. There are no quotes from Doc, just a casual characterization of a conversation that was probably a mere snippet of the whole conversation that Paul had with the writer. The writer doesn't get paid for saying, "I had an interview with Chris Paul, but he didn't say anything worth noting." I guess I've turned into a hardened skeptic of writers who include five percent information and 95 percent analysis.

Bob and Outside,

That kind of statement is not intended as a career evaluation. As you both pointed out, it's all about focus. Heck, there have been many teams in NBA history (many of them wearing white and green) that, each season, have adopted the mentality that this was a new season, and they haven't yet proven anything.

At the same time, the media and fans would be spouting the old bromide that they were the champs until proven otherwise. If the players had felt that way, the essential hunger for yet another championship might have been blunted.

Sam