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after the last 2 performances??

He was worse than the refs.

I hope someone can pull up my tread from a few months ago when I said this team will never win a championship with Doc Rivers as head coach.

All I can remember is game 7 in Boston vs the Pacers a few years ago. We lost by 30 points. Game **** 7 at home. At that moment I was conveinced that Doc is not the right coach for this team.

Some people always say this is a players league. The players have to step up. I say it's a combination of both. Coaching is very important. It's the coach who decides who plays and when.

Just look at last nights game. Powe was useless in the 2nd half and Perkins was dominating the glass. But Doc benched Perkins for Powe. Great coaching decision.

Also J.J. was torching Ray. He scored 20 in the 4th alone. Did anyone see any adjustments made? Why wasn't Pierce on J.J.? Why wasn't TA in there to slow him down?

Doc Rivers is a very likeable guy. But he is horrible at making adustments. Every play counts in the playoffs. Especially when PGA are looking old, tired, and scared, we need a coach to make the right decisions. Basically, we are **** because Doc is the coach making those decisions.

I think I screamed it 5 times last night.....WHERE THE F IS TA? He would have at least made it difficult for JJ to get those shots.

C'mon Doc lovers, where are you? He sucked last night. I could have coached that team to a win last night.

Ive been getting trashed on all season for saying Doc is an awful coach and even worse playoff coach and nobody wanted to believe me. Sadly people are starting to after the two embaressments in game #3 and #4.

I guess he sucked the 1st two games too?

JJHondo17 wrote:I guess he sucked the 1st two games too?

He didn't have to do anything in the 1st 2 games. When we get to Game 4 and he can't make a simple adjustment to guard a hot player.....

Past performances mean allot.....

and not just with players but with coaches too...JMO

most everyone here hates rivers as a coach, im one of them.

but as a person its easy to see why people like him.

that said, the success the team had this year bought rivers a year from backlash, but it will all go away if he blows a 2-0 lead to the 8th seed in the east, not the 50 win 8th seed teams in the west.

Seems to me, if he cant win in a playoff situation with this group, he never will...

The pressure is now squarely on him to perform.

CeltsfaninDC wrote:-= original quote snipped =-

He didn't have to do anything in the 1st 2 games. When we get to Game 4 and he can't make a simple adjustment to guard a hot player.....

I don't feel too strongly either way about Doc, but this is a CLASSIC example of what the blind Doc-haters do. When we lose, it's cos he sucks. When we win, it's cos we are so good he didn't have to do anything. You can't frucking have it both ways, idiots!

The only thing I really didn't like out of Doc last night was not switching Pierce over to guard JJ. Doc might have been trying to keep Pierce off JJ because he was in a bit of foul trouble, but it's clear Pierce is one of our better defenders, and it's really not like JJ is a guy whose relentless attacking the rim.

The other complaints about Doc are just hindsight nonsense.

1). Crying for TA to get in the game is ridiculous. He's played like butt for large patches of the season and didn't play any meaningful minutes in the first two games. But now everybody wants defensive player of the year Tony Allen to jump off the bench into a tight game and all of a sudden lock down JJ? Wasn't this same argument used against Doc when he brought in TA cold off the bench to D up Billups in the Detroit game earlier in the season? You guys never cease to amaze: Tony Allen. I swear to a lot of you guys he's an all star defender on the bench, but the worst player in the league when he's on the court.

2). Powe over Perkins. I don't think this was a bad decision. Powe didn't do much, but he is more capable of guarding Johnson coming off screen and rolls or in switch situations. Except for the time JJ crossed him and made him fall over, that was embarassing.

3). The backup PG situation. I can't fault Doc for Cassell playing like a total idiot. Or for Eddie House playing the same way. And as much as people bag on Doc for switching up the rotation, I can GUARANTEE if Eddie House had stayed at backup PG, every time he missed a shot, you couch coaches would be screaming for Doc to put Cassell in.

4). Smallball. This one really cracks me up. I've never seen more posters call for the small ball lineup. The same small ball lineup people used to KILL Doc for going to!!! Hypocrites.

Forget about Doc, I think the players really need to step up. The big 3 just haven't been getting it done. Rondo looks more confident than Paul Pierce has the last two games. That's where the problem is, those guys need to step it up.

JJHondo17 wrote:I guess he sucked the 1st two games too?

Doc's teams are always good out of the gate -- it's after the first game or two when opposing coaches make adjustments that he's exposed.

Granted, he will finally win a playoff series this year -- but I have serious doubts he gets out of the second round. With all the talent on this team it's a shame.

Yes, It's not Doc's fault the players decided to cruise and got lazy.

Al n' Perk No Layups! wrote:Yes, It's not Doc's fault the players decided to cruise and got lazy.

It's Doc's job to keep them motivated to play and not "cruise."

It's why Flip Saunders should have been fired last year and why he will be fired this year. It's why Larry Brown can win with Detroit and few other coaches can.

I think Doc's plan going INTO the series was fine, as evidenced by the first two games. But the problem is that Atlanta made adjustments after those two blowouts that have put them right back into the series. It's as if Doc had an excellent Plan A, but NO Plan B. Where are his adjustments?

The only "adjustment" atlanta made is that they played with a lot more energy. they didn't do anything differently, they just hustled more and made shots.

i thought doc did a nice job with adjustments this game. as for the end of game 4, how about a little blame going to ray allen? the c's were slow on rotations and even tho he beat allen, other guys were supposed to step in, but they were late so JJ could dribble thru them. it's not like doc said "hey, why don't you guys try letting JJ dribble thry the entire team?" the players have to be accountable too. they aren't robots. i was screaming at the tv about JJ too but it was at the players AND doc.

of course in Doc Hater world, anything that goes wrong is all Doc's fault, anything that goes right is because our players rock.

You have to remember Doc is not an initiator he is a reactor.

I wasn't liking what Doc and the coaches were doing the last few games, but I did like what they did in this one, letting Pierce be the aggressor and actually running some isolation plays to make things happen. The team overall did a great job this season executing plays and finding the open man, but playoff basketball's a different animal ever since the Michael Jordan Era, and you do need to see that isolation play periodically (some teams have lived and died by it) to let the team's best scorer make things happen; and Doc let Pierce do that tonight. He also got the team to jump on Joe Johnson early and often... Johnson's a scorer and will get the points, but he wasn't dribbling and waltzing around the court wherever he wanted to in this game. Those are the types adjustments I think the coaching staff can make to help the team perform better, IMO. I feel he did a good job tonight.

In sports people will talk about playing your "A" game vs. a "B"game. An "A" team or player - goes out and excutes what they want to do and dares the other team to beat it. Whereas a "B" player or team just to react to what the other team does and make them miserable.

Doc is very much an "A" guy. Thats why when it goes right for the C's they look pretty awesome. However when it goes bad he gets blamed for his lack of adjustments. He doesn't want to be that "adjusting" guy though.

Winning ugly is just not his thing.

Pete

Atlanta shot at unsustainable percentages in the two losses. Meanwhile, Boston struggled to get its offense going in a way they hadn't most of the year, which is hard for me to blame on Doc because the players obviously weren't running the offense the way he had envisioned and taught it. Doc was livid on the sidelines. He looked like he was trying to get his players focused for the games, but they just weren't playing well. Not much the coach can do about that.

For the record, I never had Doc as coach of the year, but my opinion of him hasn't changed since the regular season ended. I think he's a reasonably good coach who catches more criticism than he deserves.