What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed?

[Ranma]

Are there still any Doc apologist out there? If not, it took you long enough to see the truth that has been evident for a few years now.

[thanumba2clippersfan]

At least on this forum I don't think there's anyone who's buying into Doc Rivers. I gave him a chance and now I'm just waiting for the day he leaves our franchise.

[LACtdom]

I used to love Doc mainly because I thought he would turn us into a defensive gritty team.
I can't like any coach who doesn't want to coach our bench and instead just gets them to pass the ball to Jamal.

[Ranma]

Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports (4/26/17)

The Clippers will start to ask themselves the hard questions: Does five more years of Griffin at a max salary make sense, or does maybe two years of Carmelo Anthony become an option? If Paul starts to take free-agent meetings on July 1 and the franchise needs free-agent guard JJ Redick to wait until Paul makes a decision before it can extend an offer, does Redick simply move on, accept an annual salary in the $17 million-to-$20 million range elsewhere before the salary-cap space dries up on the market?

If the Clippers can’t come back on the Jazz, it is extremely unlikely there will be a management upheaval. What there will be is this: an orderly, exhaustive process on the next steps, because these are a complicated crossroads.

For one thing, Rivers isn’t leaving the Clippers. He’s owed $22 million-plus over the next two years, and he has the confidence of Ballmer. The Clippers didn’t promote Lawrence Frank to executive vice president of basketball operations, give him a long-term deal, only to tear apart the management structure months later. Ballmer, Rivers and Frank have worked to build out the front office and scouting department, and examine the processes of what they all agreed was the most important summer in the franchise history.

Brink of a Breakup? For the Clippers, a Summer of Uncertainty Awaits

[QRich3]

Doc's obviously not done a good job, a lot of his coaching decisions this year have been bad in hindsight, and most of all, his awful decision making as a GM in the past few years keeps collapsing and dragging this team down. I'm all for letting him go, same as I was last summer.

That said, anyone buying into the simplistic one liner that Doc is the root of all the Clippers problems, or anyone thinking he's always been a clueless coach and it's gonna be easy to replace him with someone better (as a coach), is in for a rude awakening when he's gone. Things are not as easy as most want to think, and a lot of those guys will be moaning about the next guy without understanding very well why.

I'm all for fair criticism of anyone in this franchise, but this cartoonish characterization of him and the implication that he was never qualified, and we're just opening our eyes, is ignorant and doesn't look at the actual reasons why this team hasn't done as good as we expected. A lot of which are on him, by the way, but pointing at him exclusively is only more of the usual coach lynching for no reason.

Just the same as the hot takes about Paul and the 2nd round, Blake being soft, Deandre being dumb, etc. If you can't look at the nuances of what's happened and make a rational judgement, your angry takes are not gonna hold much weight.

[Sofia]

TANK FOR (Lawrence) FRANK (to be the interim GM and coach)!

[MartinToVaught]

If Ballmer continues to sit and watch Doc flush his $2 billion investment down the toilet without firing him, he's the dumbest owner in the league. Seriously. Nobody cares how hard they worked to put together a management structure that has failed miserably. At some point, the results speak for themselves.

[MartinToVaught]

With that said, Ballmer looked pissed off down the stretch of the game:

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Let's all hope that Woj is working off of outdated information and that Ballmer is finally changing his mind on Doc. Of course, it's the Clippers and we can never have nice things, so we'll probably be stuck with Doc for ten more years.

[Bergmaniac]

Rivers isn’t leaving the Clippers. He’s owed $22 million-plus over the next two years

Wait, Doc earns more than 11 mln. per year? Was Balmer on drugs when he gave him that deal?

[Dynamix]

Rivers isn’t leaving the Clippers. He’s owed $22 million-plus over the next two years

Wait, Doc earns more than 11 mln. per year? Was Balmer on drugs when he gave him that deal?

Well, he's also our GM, so Balmer probably thought it was a bargain at the time. I really hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see Doc getting fired this summer. Balmer seems like the type of guy that's willing to let the contract end and just hope for the best until then. And Doc seems like the type of guy that could sell snow to an Eskimo.

[wco81]

Well if Doc is going to be around, and both CP3 and BG look for big extensions, looks like Clippers will be locked into this core, because Doc has already indicated he wants all the key players back.

Doc isn't the one who's going to balk on paying BG. It would have to be Ballmer.

Doc will have to convince Ballmer to write the huge checks, to convince him that they can break through in the next 4-5 years.

Or maybe convince him that they can continue to win 50-60 games and be in the mix, maybe have better luck in the playoffs and see major injuries happen to the other power teams in the WC one of these years instead of the Clippers.

[nickhx2]

all of those are reasons to max him, yes

the other biggest and most important reason is to simply lock in a star PF he can trade for assets later (along with cp3) if they decide to reboot.

letting blake/cp3 go to begin a reboot instead of using them as assets would be pure stupidity

[clip set]

It'll be interesting to see if Blake and Paul re-sign and try to negotiate into no trade clauses in light of everything. I don't see Ballmer getting rid of Doc at any point before his contract is up. He's one of the less informed owners in the league. He got a lot of praise for hiring Zucker at the time, but that was always something that bothered me. It left the organization completely devoid of any independent managers with NBA familiarity in the front office. Maybe you think the old front office was bad, but it had internal understanding of the cap and CBA, and we saw those issues arise in the time following Ballmer's overhaul. The coach having executive control over everything just isn't a viable model, when there are so many considerations that have to go into cap/CBA conformity, scouting, player evaluation, trade value assessment, etc.

[wco81]

But there are other teams which have given coaches GM powers right?

I think Van Gundy in Detroit and possibly Kidd in Milwaukee?

[MartinToVaught]

But there are other teams which have given coaches GM powers right?

I think Van Gundy in Detroit and possibly Kidd in Milwaukee?

SVG has personnel power in Detroit. They missed the playoffs with the fifth-highest payroll in the league this season.

Budenholzer has personnel power in Atlanta. He overpaid the crap out of Kent Bazemore and washed-up Dwight last offseason.

Thibs has personnel power in Minnesota. It's too early to judge him given how bad the team was that he inherited.

As for Milwaukee, John Hammond is still the GM.

[wco81]

The other thing is, I understand wanting to retain assets, not wanting to lose them for nothing.

But it's still $400 million for two players, a steep price for flexibility.

Not saying there are better alternatives but if Blake shows sign of decline, his contract will be impossible to move.

[nickhx2]

The other thing is, I understand wanting to retain assets, not wanting to lose them for nothing.

But it's still $400 million for two players, a steep price for flexibility.

Not saying there are better alternatives but if Blake shows sign of decline, his contract will be impossible to move.

Well, it's not just "two assets" for nothing. It's losing two very high value assets for nothing, when the alternative is getting high value return for those high value assets.

WRT flexibility, that's an extremely good thing to have when you actually have a good team already in place and are ready to challenge/move up in the pecking order. Flexibility means jack monkey squat when you're devoid of talent and hoping to hit more ping pong balls than the next garbo lotto team with a similar record. Tell me something, what kind of team do you think the clippers will be if they decide to let blake/cp3 go in order to gain that flexibility? Because if you ask me they'll be a trash lotto team with almost no assets and some cap space which will be useless because nobody in their right mind will think the deandre jordan/austin rivers pairing only requires one more star to contend for rings. I mean at least with a team like the 76ers, they have actual young star talent and tons of picks, so their flexibility is somewhat meaningful because they already have their core. The clippers jettisoning cp3/blake means their core is forfeit, so again, flexibility does nothing for the team.

As far as the blake decline stuff, you could argue that he's already declining in some ways. But it's not a steep drop off, and he also didn't suffer an ACL/achilles injury, and he isn't getting microfracture surgery. So the risk of signing him to a big contract now after an injury isn't really a thing, and moving him if need be should be significantly easier. And if say nobody wants him, the clippers could be in far worse positions than featuring a player who should still be pretty good, at minimum, for at least a few more years.

[Ranma]

Rivers isn’t leaving the Clippers. He’s owed $22 million-plus over the next two years

Wait, Doc earns more than 11 mln. per year? Was Balmer on drugs when he gave him that deal?

It was actually Sterling who gave him his contract to entice him to leave a bad situation in Boston, which never made sense to me. On top of that, we had to surrender a first-round pick to boot and, if Doc had his way, we'd have also traded DJ for KG.
It was shocking for our notoriously cheap owner to pony up the cash and make such a commitment that it was actually considered a good sign at the time.

[QRich3]

It'll be interesting to see if Blake and Paul re-sign and try to negotiate into no trade clauses in light of everything. I don't see Ballmer getting rid of Doc at any point before his contract is up. He's one of the less informed owners in the league. He got a lot of praise for hiring Zucker at the time, but that was always something that bothered me. It left the organization completely devoid of any independent managers with NBA familiarity in the front office. Maybe you think the old front office was bad, but it had internal understanding of the cap and CBA, and we saw those issues arise in the time following Ballmer's overhaul. The coach having executive control over everything just isn't a viable model, when there are so many considerations that have to go into cap/CBA conformity, scouting, player evaluation, trade value assessment, etc.

Paul is getting one for sure. Don't think this scenario hasn't occurred to him or his agent, and he's not signing to be trade bait for a team he might not want to play for.

Blake's case is trickier, he'd probably love to get one, but you have to have played at least 8 seasons in the league to qualify for one. And while this is technically his 7th season, it's the 8th if you count the rookie year he missed. So he might qualify for one in the end. Thinking of it, he probably does since he was getting paychecks that year.

Regarding the money, the Clippers are only one and a half million over the luxury tax, so they might want to duck it by paying a couple 2nds on draft night for someone to eat Pierce's contract, or (hope not) dump Brice+Stone for capspace. That way they'd avoid paying the repeater tax next year, which is what's a killer.

[Bergmaniac]

Rivers isn’t leaving the Clippers. He’s owed $22 million-plus over the next two years

Wait, Doc earns more than 11 mln. per year? Was Balmer on drugs when he gave him that deal?

It was actually Sterling who gave him his contract to entice him to leave a bad situation in Boston, which never made sense to me. On top of that, we had to surrender a first-round pick to boot and, if Doc had his way, we'd have traded DJ for KG.
It was shocking for our notoriously cheap owner to pony up the cash and make such a commitment that it was actually considered a good sign at the time.

Doc signed a contract extension two weeks after Ballmer bought the franchise.