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Although nothing has been made official, all indications are that Rivers and Ballmer have reached an agreement on a multiyear extension that will keep Rivers here for a remodeling job that will begin soon.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-clippers-rivers-plaschke-20180505-story.html



Typical Clippers move. This fanbase deserves better than this. All my optimism for this rebuild is now officially gone, just like that.

Just to put this in perspective:

We hired Doc in the hopes that he could take the Blake/CP3/DJ core, which we thought was a contender at the time, to the championship level.

That team never reached that level under Doc, so now we have to rebuild. Therefore, we're giving Doc a contract extension.

How on Earth does this decision make any logical sense?

MartinToVaught wrote:

Although nothing has been made official, all indications are that Rivers and Ballmer have reached an agreement on a multiyear extension that will keep Rivers here for a remodeling job that will begin soon.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-clippers-rivers-plaschke-20180505-story.html



Typical Clippers move. This fanbase deserves better than this. All my optimism for this rebuild is now officially gone, just like that.

We'll miss you around here.

I never said I was going anywhere.

Well, I guess the next question is...

How many years and at what number for Austin?


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MartinToVaught wrote:I never said I was going anywhere.

esqtvd wrote:

Read on Twitter

Yawn. Doc is being hypocritical here, regardless of the excuses he comes up with to justify it.

I thought something might be up when Doc didn't/wasn't allowed to throw his hat in the ring for the Knicks job and now the Bucks. It wouldn't have been kosher to leave Doc hanging as a lame duck--although it appears Ballmer considered doing just that.

On the other end, owner Steve Ballmer sounded uncertain why somebody who had a contract would need an extension.

“The other thing I’m really just learning about the NBA is that in a regular business, a five-year contract is a five-year contract and you talk about the sixth year after the fifth year,” Ballmer said. “That doesn’t seem to be the protocol in the NBA.”

But if Doc didn't want to be part of a rebuild here he would have asked to chase the Milwaukee gig and Ballmer would or should have let him if he thought his heart wasn't in it here.

I suppose they'll announce the details [3 years seems about right] but the point is that firing Doc next summer remains an option anyway. His contract is still pocket change for Ballmer.

If you told me this a year ago, I would be really upset. But after he was removed as GM, and did a pretty good job as a coach under tough circumstances, I feel better about it.

Sure, I'd still like us to start fresh, as long as we can get a better replacement. I'm just not sure who that person might be. Guys like Brad Stevens don't grow on trees. So I'm fine with seeing what Doc can do for another few years, with a healthy and hopefully improved roster. If he fails to deliver and a strong candidate becomes available, then by all means pull the trigger.

As it stands right now, my top non-roster priority would be upgrading the medical staff.

Ranma wrote:

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If one of the coaches hired by other NBA teams succeed, it will be an indictment against Baller for retaining Doc.

I honestly thought Doc was closer on his way out rather than staying with our franchise. I guess the front office is confident that we can have a competitive roster going forward. I was thinking though if we have a new roster, with a lot of young guys, it might be better to have a different voice leading them. I guess Ballmer thought different.

Ballmer was criticized during his CEO tenure for not making difficult decisions, which would mean firing people or taking sides when different division heads clashed.

So this could be part of that pattern.

esqtvd wrote:

Imagine gloating this hard that the team you're supposedly a fan of made a dumb decision.

You really are a Rivers fan, not a Clippers fan.

Ugh and he will be weighing in on trades and the draft process.



Was this Jerry West's idea?

Dynamix wrote:If you told me this a year ago, I would be really upset. But after he was removed as GM, and did a pretty good job as a coach under tough circumstances, I feel better about it.

I really don't understand this argument. The "tough circumstances" this year were the exact opposite of the results that Doc was hired to bring to this franchise. He was hired to take the Clippers to the championship level, not to "do a pretty good job as a coach under tough circumstances." And Doc set the stage for the "tough circumstances" this season by failing as a GM and underachieving in the playoffs with the Blake/CP3/DJ core.

To sum it up: the Clippers are rewarding Doc with a contract extension for not doing what he was hired to do. This is a fundamentally illogical decision.

Guys like Brad Stevens don't grow on trees.

I don't recall Stevens being the trendy name that every team wanted when the Celtics hired him.

The Bulls found Phil Jackson when he was coaching in the Puerto Rican league. Spo was an obscure assistant/scout before the Heat promoted him to head coach. Steve Kerr was hired out of the broadcasting booth with no previous coaching experience.

Great coaches can come from anywhere. The Clippers just lack the imagination to find the next great one.

So I'm fine with seeing what Doc can do for another few years, with a healthy and hopefully improved roster.

We've already seen what Doc can do. When he has talented teams, he blows series leads and gets dragged to Game 7 by inferior opponents. When he has less talented teams, he misses the playoffs and brags about "overachieving." Our record has declined every single year Doc has been our coach. What's going to suddenly change now?

Quake Griffin wrote:Ugh and he will be weighing in on trades and the draft process.

This isn't news. When Doc was "demoted" from the front office last year, Ballmer, Doc and Frank all said he would still have input in the personnel decisions. "Demoting" him was a purely ceremonial move to make it look like things would be different. Nothing's actually changed, Doc still runs the show. This is why "demoting" him wasn't good enough; the Clippers are going nowhere until they move on from the Doc era entirely.

MartinToVaught wrote:

Dynamix wrote:If you told me this a year ago, I would be really upset. But after he was removed as GM, and did a pretty good job as a coach under tough circumstances, I feel better about it.

I really don't understand this argument. The "tough circumstances" this year were the exact opposite of the results that Doc was hired to bring to this franchise. He was hired to take the Clippers to the championship level, not to "do a pretty good job as a coach under tough circumstances." And Doc set the stage for the "tough circumstances" this season by failing as a GM and underachieving in the playoffs with the Blake/CP3/DJ core.

To sum it up: the Clippers are rewarding Doc with a contract extension for not doing what he was hired to do. This is a fundamentally illogical decision.

I don't disagree with your conclusion here, but the Dynamix post you're responding to isn't really an argument. It's just a statement of fact (other than the part about how he feels). Doc DID coach much better after the GM role was removed. He DID face tough circumstances.

From Ballmer's POV, he could have fired Doc last year. I'm sure he considered it. But instead, he decided to see whether Doc could coach a young team in transition when all he had to focus on was the coaching. To my great surprise ... he can. He's a better coach for that kind of team, it turns out, than he was for a supposed contender full of stars. You're absolutely right that he wasn't hired for that, but he was KEPT this season for that, and he did it well. Much better than I ever thought he could. Like Dynamix, I feel better about Doc than I did last year, because he showed me something this year that I didn't know he had.

Again, Ballmer, looking at this from an HR perspective, gave an employee a new role instead of firing him, and he did well in it. It would be disingenuous to now fire him after all because you still don't like how he performed in his previous role.

The franchise is pointing in the right direction for the first time since Ballmer's been here. After several seasons of sameness -- big names, big contracts, no cap room, disappointing results -- they tried something different. It takes some time in this league for a rebuild (or a retool or whatever spin they're putting on it) to play out. You can't keep making wholesale changes over and over again. You commit to the process for the time it takes.