Doc Rivers thinks his Clippers ‘should be better than any team I’ve ever coached’

I'm befuddled about the reaction here to Doc's banner comment. I guess it's an eye of the beholder thing.

It seems straightforward to me. Why should the Clippers have to display the Lakers' championship regalia during Clipper home games? They share the arena with the Lakers, but that doesn't mean the Lakers should wave their championship banners and retired jerseys in the Clippers' faces at every Clipper home game. The Clippers change out the floor for their home games, and it seems only reasonable to take other measures to make it their home gym.

Why they haven't done this ages ago is beyond me, but I thought it was interesting that it took Doc, a former Celtic coach who is well-versed in the symbolism of those banners, to do this. My take on it is that he was doing it as a positive step for his team, to tell them they don't have to live under the thumb of the Lakers any more, and as a way to tweak the Lakers, both as the current Clipper coach and a former Celtic coach. The Clippers are clearly better than the Lakers in their current iterations, and this is, at a minimum, the Clippers exerting their status as NBA equals instead of accepting their status as the JV team in the building.

This is separate from any discussion about the historical places of the two franchises. Despite any derision directed at the Lakers for not following the Celtic standards for displaying banners, they are a great franchise. Jim Buss is a poor excuse as a replacement for his father, but he's better than Donald Sterling, who is the most despicable human being I can think of who currently calls himself an NBA owner. But none of that means the Clippers should have to display the Lakers' banners during Clipper home games.

Outside,

To me, it doesn't matter one way or another what the Clippers decide to do. I just thought it was funny the Clippers would cover banners, as if it makes those titles disappear or something.

If Doc is in fact motivating the Clippers by using the Lakers as a means to galvanize the team, he's using the wrong ball club. Miami has won the past 2 titles, while the Lakers have a long road back to winning titles.

But, the two LA teams and their respective reputations are what they are for a reason. That's all I'm saying.


KJ

Outside,

I understand all of your points. But I believe this Clippers' move makes a mockery of the long-time practice of displaying the numbers of players who have proven themselves to be worthy of ongoing acclaim—most of them Hall of Famers. In all the years of the NBA, please tell me which players' numbers have been raised while they're still playing. And which players' numbers were raised with the expectation that they could be covered by another team when said other team felt like it?

I understand Doc's intent, and I've been a big fan of most of his motivational measures. But, if I were a Lakers fan, I'd be really pissed off right about another team being allowed to cover the banners of my heroes just to provide the Clippers with an allegedly motivational tool.

Why couldn't the Clips raise their banners somewhere else in the arena? Because they'd look laughable by comparison, that's why. I believe they'll look laughable with no comparison needed. I wonder what will be the reactions of the journeymen on the Clippers who weren't chosen among the journeymen whose numbers will be raised. If the "raisees" aren't being recognized for their long-time greatness, why raise just some numbers rather than those of the entire team?

And what about the long-time Staples Centers ushers and janitors? Shouldn't they get some notice?

Another question. What will happen if one of the players whose numbers will be hanging gets traded? Does his banner suddenly disappear into the night? Will it be rehung upside down? Or are all of the "hangees" automatically immune to trade?

Definitely a mockery!

Sam

What a farse.

If they want banners they need to do it the old fashion way. They need to earn them.

At the very least earn a Western Conference title banner and fly that all around the godamn building.

dboss

I think mistake #1 was using the term banner.
I don't know if Doc or the Clippers used the word banner or this is just how it was written in the stories about it.
It would have been much more acceptable if the Clippers said they were going to cover the Lakers banners with posters of current players.
I am assuming that the Lakers and Clippers have equal rights to the Staples Center and that the Clippers are allowed to cover the banners.
Is it a bit of a slap in the face? Yes.
Do I understand it? Yes, for sure.
Would I do the same thing if I was Doc? I can't say that I wouldn't.
I don't know if the Lakers banners haunt the Clippers players or if they are better off not covering them for motivational reasons.
The Clippers have been an utter joke of a franchise for decades from the top down.
They have turned many lottery picks into continued non-success.
The Clippers are the new hot team in LA.
They are exciting and will probably win 25-30 more games then the Lakers this season.
I say, if both teams are 50/50 on the rights to the arena, let them cover the banners with their posters. Let them out from the Lakers shadow even more then they are.

They should be paying attention to the opponents on the floor, not the banners in the rafters. What, are guys going to stop mid game to look up in shame at the banners because their franchise hasn't done anything worthwhile?

It's pathetic. Play the game and win if you want banners. If you can't then I guess they'll have to deal with being the "other" team in LA.


KJ

I just don't see any issue with it. Neither team OWNS the place and both have completely different floors that are set up. There isn't another team in the league that has the present opponents banners in the rafters either. Of course no one else shares an arena either. So why is it an issue to make it as much of a Clippers Court/Arena as possible?

If it's MY team I don't want to look up during a home game and see that. I think that  both diehard Clipper fans would feel the same way. So covering them up with a photo to me is no issue, call it a banner, photo, whatever.

And KJ do you really thing the players during the heat of the game are going stop to look at the "banners"?

So to date they have done little so what? Only other alternative build their own arena I suppose.

beat

beat wrote:I just don't see any issue with it. Neither team OWNS the place and both have completely different floors that are set up. There isn't another team in the league that has the present opponents banners in the rafters either. Of course no one else shares an arena either. So why is it an issue to make it as much of a Clippers Court/Arena as possible?

If it's MY team I don't want to look up during a home game and see that. I think that  both diehard Clipper fans would feel the same way. So covering them up with a photo to me is no issue, call it a banner, photo, whatever.

And KJ do you really thing the players during the heat of the game are going stop to look at the "banners"?

So to date they have done little so what? Only other alternative build their own arena I suppose.

beat

+1

Their home game, their home court.

No problem and no big deal.

I was thinking of it mainly from the Lakers' fans' points of view and the Lakers' legends' points of view. If TJ is representative of most Lakers fans and doesn't care about it, I guess it's fine. I guess I'm fortunate to feel a part of Celtic Pride. I'm just glad the Boston Police didn't try to take me down when I swung from the rafters at the Real Garden during a U2 concert on St. Patty's Day, 1992.

Sam

Sam wrote:In all the years of the NBA, please tell me which players' numbers have been raised while they're still playing.

I think TJ raises an excellent point that we should consider the Clipper hangings "posters" instead of "banners." They're like those giant Fathead images of current athletes. Numerous arenas have large images of current players outside and even inside their arenas.

They are not "retired jersey" banners. Here's what they look like:

Sam wrote:And which players' numbers were raised with the expectation that they could be covered by another team when said other team felt like it?

The Lakers and Clippers are the only NBA teams to share an arena. This is not as random and capricious as you portray in the quote above. This is not the Jazz covering up Nugget banners in Denver. This is not even the Clippers covering the Laker banners for a Laker game. This is only when the court is the home court for the Clippers.

To turn your question on its head, why should team A expect team B to be allowed to display team B banners during team A home games?

Sam wrote:I understand Doc's intent, and I've been a big fan of most of his motivational measures. But, if I were a Lakers fan, I'd be really pissed off right about another team being allowed to cover the banners of my heroes just to provide the Clippers with an allegedly motivational tool.

They're roommates. They have to coexist in the same space. Accommodations should be expected.

Sam wrote:Why couldn't the Clips raise their banners somewhere else in the arena? Because they'd look laughable by comparison, that's why. I believe they'll look laughable with no comparison needed. I wonder what will be the reactions of the journeymen on the Clippers who weren't chosen among the journeymen whose numbers will be raised. If the "raisees" aren't being recognized for their long-time greatness, why raise just some numbers rather than those of the entire team?

It's not about Clipper banners, and they're not attempting to portray their franchise as historically accomplished. They're posters. They're graphics being used to obscure Laker banners so that the Clippers can exert their equal rights to the arena. They have a right to make Staples Center their arena for their home games. They shouldn't be subjected to visual assertions of Laker superiority during their own games.

Sam wrote:Another question. What will happen if one of the players whose numbers will be hanging gets traded? Does his banner suddenly disappear into the night? Will it be rehung upside down? Or are all of the "hangees" automatically immune to trade?

These are graphics, nothing more. They are not in any way equivalent to championship banners or past great player banners. Just graphics.


The ideal solution would be for each team to have their own arena, but they are in the unique situation of sharing an arena. If the Lakers want to have their banners displayed at all times for all events, including Clipper games, then they should get exclusive NBA rights to the arena.

But since they share an arena, they have to accept that the Clippers don't want Laker banners lording over them during Clipper home games. The simplest solution is to remove the Laker banners for Clipper games, but since they're going to such lengths to cover the banners instead of remove them, I assume there is a clause in the Staples Center contract that says the banners have to stay up. That leads to odd workarounds such as placing a large poster (TJ, I do think that's a better word) over a Laker banner.

It's the kind of lawyer-derived solution that led to the Angels being "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" for a while. That occurred because the team was contractually obligated to include "Anaheim" in the team name but the owner wanted to use "Los Angeles" in the name to identify with the larger market.

No one is besmirching Celtic banners. A perceived affront to Laker banners is not an affront to NBA banners everywhere. And if the Lakers don't want this happening, they should get their own NBA arena. But due to the finances of building arenas in downtown LA, they decided to share Staples Center. They rented their bed and got a bedmate to share the cost, so now they have to live with the arrangement.

Outside wrote:

Sam wrote:In all the years of the NBA, please tell me which players' numbers have been raised while they're still playing.

I think TJ raises an excellent point that we should consider the Clipper hangings "posters" instead of "banners." They're like those giant Fathead images of current athletes. Numerous arenas have large images of current players outside and even inside their arenas.

They are not "retired jersey" banners. Here's what they look like:

Sam wrote:And which players' numbers were raised with the expectation that they could be covered by another team when said other team felt like it?

The Lakers and Clippers are the only NBA teams to share an arena. This is not as random and capricious as you portray in the quote above. This is not the Jazz covering up Nugget banners in Denver. This is not even the Clippers covering the Laker banners for a Laker game. This is only when the court is the home court for the Clippers.

To turn your question on its head, why should team A expect team B to be allowed to display team B banners during team A home games?

Sam wrote:I understand Doc's intent, and I've been a big fan of most of his motivational measures. But, if I were a Lakers fan, I'd be really pissed off right about another team being allowed to cover the banners of my heroes just to provide the Clippers with an allegedly motivational tool.

They're roommates. They have to coexist in the same space. Accommodations should be expected.

Sam wrote:Why couldn't the Clips raise their banners somewhere else in the arena? Because they'd look laughable by comparison, that's why. I believe they'll look laughable with no comparison needed. I wonder what will be the reactions of the journeymen on the Clippers who weren't chosen among the journeymen whose numbers will be raised. If the "raisees" aren't being recognized for their long-time greatness, why raise just some numbers rather than those of the entire team?

It's not about Clipper banners, and they're not attempting to portray their franchise as historically accomplished. They're posters. They're graphics being used to obscure Laker banners so that the Clippers can exert their equal rights to the arena. They have a right to make Staples Center their arena for their home games. They shouldn't be subjected to visual assertions of Laker superiority during their own games.

Sam wrote:Another question. What will happen if one of the players whose numbers will be hanging gets traded? Does his banner suddenly disappear into the night? Will it be rehung upside down? Or are all of the "hangees" automatically immune to trade?

These are graphics, nothing more. They are not in any way equivalent to championship banners or past great player banners. Just graphics.


The ideal solution would be for each team to have their own arena, but they are in the unique situation of sharing an arena. If the Lakers want to have their banners displayed at all times for all events, including Clipper games, then they should get exclusive NBA rights to the arena.

But since they share an arena, they have to accept that the Clippers don't want Laker banners lording over them during Clipper home games. The simplest solution is to remove the Laker banners for Clipper games, but since they're going to such lengths to cover the banners instead of remove them, I assume there is a clause in the Staples Center contract that says the banners have to stay up. That leads to odd workarounds such as placing a large poster (TJ, I do think that's a better word) over a Laker banner.

It's the kind of lawyer-derived solution that led to the Angels being "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" for a while. That occurred because the team was contractually obligated to include "Anaheim" in the team name but the owner wanted to use "Los Angeles" in the name to identify with the larger market.

No one is besmirching Celtic banners. A perceived affront to Laker banners is not an affront to NBA banners everywhere. And if the Lakers don't want this happening, they should get their own NBA arena. But due to the finances of building arenas in downtown LA, they decided to share Staples Center. They rented their bed and got a bedmate to share the cost, so now they have to live with the arrangement.

outside,

I agree with everything in your well-reasoned post.

Especially when you described them as "Fatheads".


bob


.

Outside,

I never stated that someone was besmirching Celtic banners.  I believe I remarked that I was glad that was NOT happening.  I never claimed an affront to Laker banners was an affront to NBA banners everywhere.  I believe I specified that it makes a mockery of the tradition of retiring the numbers of great players in the NBA.  I believe that practice is demeaned if one franchise posts banners, posters, or cardboard Halloween cutouts of journeymen players specifically to obliterate another team's banners of legends for any period of time or any reason.

You mentioned a key word—perceptions.  We all know that perception is in the eye of the beholder.  All the stuff about roommates and sharing and accomodation and posters versus banners is all well and good on a factual basis   But it's perception we're talking about. Mine is that this move, whether it involves banners or posters or junior billboards covered with graffiti, and coming well after the two teams began coexisting and there has been plenty of time to establish accommodations, is bush league. Did the Lakers' banners just start "lording it over" the Clippers after all these years?

Last April, when the Clippers were about to begin their first playoff series in god knows when, Clippers fans hung balloons on Magic Johnson's statue.  Exactly when do fun or accommodation cross the line of disrespect?

Do you know whether they've set the date and time for the replacement of Magic's statue with a papier mâché lookaline that can be raised and lowered from game to game?  Or, alternatively, will they dig a special tunnel for Clippers' players so they won't have to sear their eyeballs with the sight of the statue when entering Staples?  By the way, I mean none of this literally.  I'm making fun of the move.  That is my right, and I'm exercising it!

Bush league!

Sam

I'd let the banner thing go because there didn't seem to be anything left to say, but this item in today's LA Times does add a wrinkle.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-doc-rivers-says-lakers-fans-can-blame-boston-for-their-covered-banners-20131024,0,6219863.story#axzz2ieoj4UZd

Doc Rivers: Lakers fans can blame Boston for their covered banners

By Melissa Rohlin
Los Angeles Times
October 24, 2013

Lakers fans have yet another reason to groan at the thought of Boston.

A Boston guy came up with the idea of covering the Lakers' championship banners and retired jerseys at Staples Center during Clippers games, according to Clippers Coach Doc Rivers.

Here's how it went down.

"Last year when the Clippers were blowing us out, obviously I was sitting there with Eddie Lacerte, our trainer in Boston, and he taps me on the leg and says, 'Look at that,' " Rivers said before Wednesday's preseason game against the Utah Jazz.

"I didn't want to look at anything at that point, we were down by 30 points, and I look up and you see all the banners. He said, 'Man, I would never have that.' This is what Eddie said. And I thought 'Well, he's right.' Again, the Lakers can blame a Boston guy."

Rivers said that since the Clippers announced the move, he's received mostly positive feedback.

"The other day I was in a drug store and a Laker fan said, 'I can't believe you covered up our banners, but I was always wondering why you hadn't done it in the past,' " Rivers said.

"It's the Clipper court and that's the way we feel. Again, it's not a disrespectful thing at all, it's not intended that way at all, it's more that when we play our game it should be about us and only us."

The Lakers have 12 championship banners — five titles won in Minneapolis are represented on one banner — and 10 retired jerseys, including one for announcer Chick Hearn. The Clippers have yet to win a championship.

TNT NBA analyst Reggie Miller weighed in on the saga during a conference call with reporters Tuesday, supporting the coach's decision.

“I love it! It’s about time," Miller said. "You cannot tell me that any Clippers coaches before have not thought about that and gone to management and actually said something. It took Doc Rivers to come in here. You play in the same building, how could you not cover them up? I think it’s a brilliant move. You are telling your team: ‘We’re taking over L.A., and we respect the banners … but this is our time.”

Outside,

I'm not at all sure what we're supposed to conclude from the apparent fact that Ed Lacerte mentioned a hypothetical aside to Doc.  Are we, as Celtics fans, supposed to have anointed Ed Lacerte as our spokesperson?  Is Ed Lacerte's offhanded comment supposed to represent the position of the Celtics franchise?

The Clippers began using the Staples Center in 1999.  Did they cover Lakers' banners that year?  How about 2000?  How about 2001?  How about 2002?  How about 2003?  How about 2004?  How about 2005?  2006?  2007? 2008? 2009? 2010? 2011? 2012?  Fourteen years would seem ample time to identify and implement appropriate "accommodations" or policies with respect to sharing the stadium.

I love the Kickboxer, Reggie Miller's comment: "You are telling your team: ‘We’re taking over L.A., and we respect the banners … but this is our time.”  I'm wondering which specific element of the act of covering the Lakers' legends' banners is supposed to convey the respect in which the Clippers hold the Lakers' legends and their banners.  I guess I'm missing something.  Empty rhetoric sucks, Reggie.

I just think it's an affront to the Lakers' legends and to the permanency of the honor of having one's number retired (regardless of who and where).  The former is the Lakers' problem, not mine.  I'm personally offended by the latter—perhaps because retired numbers are icons of Celtics history unlike that of any other team, and they mean much more to me than a photo op.  Perhaps it also hits a little close to home that the idea was implemented by a coach who worked for many years literally under the Celtics' retired numbers and who now appears to be saying, "Retired numbers?  They're just a triviality.  We should have no second thoughts about covering them to motivate our upstart team."  (How's that for a quote, Kickboxer?)  I just dread the day the first Lakers' statue is defaced.  Nah, I'm sure no one in Hollywood is creative enough destructive enough, and crazy enough to do that.

Sam

The Clippers won't win anything anyway. In the end, it'll all be meaningless posturing.


KJ