BRAD STEVENS, DOC RIVERS AND C'S OF CHANGE

WEEI

BEN ROHRBACH

Doc Rivers (right) and Brad Stevens now standing at opposite ends. (David Butler II/USA Today Sports)

What a difference three years makes.

It’s been a little over a thousand days since Danny Ainge salvaged a first-round pick from the Clippers out of his coach’s unwillingness to serve the three years and $21 million remaining on his contract. Despite all the bitter hand wringing over Doc Rivers’ departure, the Celtics couldn’t be happier with the way it all worked out.

Halfway through his six-year, $22 million contract, Brad Stevens, whose sixth-place finish in Tuesday’s Coach of the Year voting was an injustice, is far better suited to lead the Celtics to their next championship, at half the price. Heck, he might be more likely to bring another title to Boston before Rivers leads the Clippers to their first.

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“Clearly, I had a selfish motive. I had a chance to not rebuild and go to a team that is in a different phase of their franchise.” -- Doc Rivers on The Dan Patrick Show in June 2013, just days after the former Celtics coach orchestrated a trade from Boston to L.A.

With the trade of Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Nets in the works and Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan already in place on a Clippers team that won 56 games under Vinny Del Negro in 2012-13, Rivers seemed to be moving from one team shutting its championship window to another with the sash wide open.

Since then, the Clippers have won between 53 and 57 games three years running and reached the Western Conference semifinals in each of the past two seasons -- no further than the franchise had been before, no further than most imagined when Rivers arrived with championship parade routes through L.A. already mapped.

Now, his Clippers are a No. 4 seed in the West, tied two games apiece with the rebuilding Blazers, facing the rest of the playoffs without Chris Paul (hand) and Blake Griffin (quad). Doc’s juggling a lineup in L.A. that features his two highest scorers the last time he coached a playoff series in Boston -- Pierce and Jeff Green.

CP3 turns 31 on May 6, and Rivers was shopping Griffin at the deadline, when he was sitting out with a right hand he broke on a team employee’s face. Meanwhile, the Warriors became a basketball phenomenon and the Spurs reloaded on the fly, making the Clippers’ path to the finals -- this year or any year -- all the more difficult. So, yeah, Doc the GM might have to inform Doc the coach to prepare for a rebuild.

Despite a ballooning salary cap, few teams have less money to spend in free agency this summer than the Clippers, who have $71.6 million committed to four guys who haven’t gotten them out of the second round. Not to mention they’ve been described as the NBA’s “most hated team by far.” They also fielded the league’s third-oldest roster (average age of 29.4 years old), and they’re guaranteed to pick outside the lottery until at least 2018. Any way you slice it, the Clippers are a team in decline.

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Doc Rivers (left) and Brad Stevens are about to head in different directions. (Richard Mackson/USA Today Sports)

“We are going to try to be the very best we can be every single day. It’s part of the process. It’s part of the way that I believe in doing things. You strive to play to your standard every single day.” -- Brad Stevens on WEEI's Green Street podcast after accepting the Celtics job

In July 2013, Stevens welcomed the depleted roster Rivers left behind, leaving a Butler program he built into a national contender for a Celtics team in shambles.

Where Rivers had been through a rebuild before and looked years down the line, Stevens saw an opportunity to put his process-oriented approach to the ultimate basketball test, building an NBA team into a title contender one possession at a time.

On opening night of his first year in Boston, as the last Celtics star left, Rajon Rondo, recovered from knee surgery, Stevens started Green, Avery Bradley, Gerald Wallace, Brandon Bass and Vitor Faverani, two of whom are no longer in the NBA. It was an impossible task, coaching players who either felt abandoned by Rivers (Green, Courtney Lee, etc.) or scrapped by the Nets (Kris Humphries, Keith Bogans, etc.).

The result, as Rivers foresaw, was a lost season -- a 25-win campaign that probably should’ve been worse. And with the teardown complete in 2014, the rebuilding began in earnest. Ainge started laying a foundation with a young roster full of high-motor, high-IQ and high-character guys who reflected their fresh-faced coach.

Within two years, the Celtics were back in the playoffs with a core of castoffs who Ainge identified and Stevens molded into a handful of the best contracts in the NBA.

The C’s featured seven players who averaged nine or more points in 2015-16, and Avery Bradley’s $7.7 million salary was the highest of the bunch. That group won seven more games and has equaled the playoff win total from Rivers’ final season in Boston. Ainge and Stevens trusted their process, and three years later a tiebreaker and two wins stand between a higher seed and deeper playoff run than Doc’s Clips.

Even if their season ends on Thursday, the Celtics enter the offseason with the fourth-youngest roster in the league (average age of 24.6 years old), a 15.6 percent chance at the No. 1 overall pick, enough cap space to sign multiple max contracts and a coach who’s drawn praise from almost every high-profile free agent out there. There is no reason to believe the Celtics will be anything but better in 2016-17.

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So, if you were one of those people who felt Rivers wronged the Celtics in 2013 (raises hand), relish now in the fact that his going Hollywood couldn’t have worked out better for the Celtics. Well, unless R.J. Hunter turns into a legitimate NBA talent, then we may look at the Rivers for Stevens swap as one of the best trades in franchise history, right behind the Nets deal that triggered Doc’s dissatisfaction.

In the coolest or cruelest bit of irony, depending on which side of the country you reside, Rivers may have to shop a disgruntled Griffin again this summer, and the Celtics just might be able to put the best package together for a trade that would begin the demolition project in L.A. and further cement the C’s rebuilding effort.

Oh, what a difference three years makes.

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He did us a big favor by leaving. There is no way some of the young talent would have developed under Doc. He was a great coach for a team that was stacked with veteran talent. Young guys (other than Rondo) never had a chance.

Stevens is the future, Doc the past. Now look at what he has going on in LA, he may be forced to rebuild there.
I will take my chances with Brad, the future is bright for the Celtics.

Rosalie

PS My issue with Doc is not that he wanted to leave, it is the way he did it. He signed a 5 year contract guaranteeing him he was the highest paid coach in the league, and I felt all along he knew he was never going to fulfill that contract. He should had thanked the Celtics on the way out the door for that contract.

Always felt the Pierce-Garnett-Allen Celtics should have won more than one championship. I know they had some bad breaks with injuries, but I also think Doc rode the big 3 too hard, and they were just gassed, both in general at the end of the season, and in specific games where they just played too many minutes. An unfortunate outcome of this approach is that he didn't develop talent or allow some veterans to find their groove, resulting in further dependence on the big 3. Not saying Brad would have done better - as such a young guy, I'm not sure he could have coached vets like PP, KG, and RA the same way he has coached these young teams - but I have to wonder how Pop would have handled those late 2000's teams.

Rosalie, my sentiments exactly! Don't let the door hit you in the Axx on the way out Doc!

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