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LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS MEDIA CONFERENCEJune 26, 2014Doc RiversDOC RIVERS: He's a great shooter, and I value shooting. You know, when you're at 28, I don't think you can afford to pick what needs you have. You know, I have never thought that. A great example last year, when we picked Reggie, and we didn't need a three at the time, we had Duds and thought we were going to get that, and Matt. We have Jamal and J.J., but he's the best player, and I think you can always make it work when you can get the best player, and I thought as far as for shooting, in this league, you need it, you can never have enough of it, and I'm a big believer in it, and I thought he may have been the best shooter in the draft, if not No. 1, No. 2. Q. You guys were near the bottom of the league in three-point shooting, you hold a bunch of records in three-point shooting. How big is that specifically? DOC RIVERS: Well, it's important, but we also led the league in scoring, so we're not going to worry about where it came from. As long as you're scoring and you're efficient, you're pretty good with that. But you know, listen, again, I just think shooting is a premium in our league, and the more you have it, the better for us. Q. Were you guys close to maybe moving that pick, and kind of how the day -- take us through the day. DOC RIVERS: The day was an interesting day. We were close to doing a couple things. I'll tell you that. And actually a pick wasn't involved. I think we would have ended up with another pick actually if we'd have done one deal. You know, as you know, you've been around long enough, I know you have. Most deals fall apart. We didn't have great confidence this morning when we woke up that the deal we thought we may get would happen, but we're out there picking. Q. You said that one of the first things you mentioned to him was being able to play defense. How confident are you in him being able to be a good defender? DOC RIVERS: Well, I don't know if any college player can play defense when they first walk in to the NBA. I've seen that proven over time, but some can. He's long, he's athletic, and it's rare when you get a shooter like that, not only he's a catch-and-shoot guy, too, that wants to defend, that's a great combination. Like most of the time you get a great shooter but can't defend or a great shooter but not athletic. We have a great shooter who can defend and is athletic, so I thought that was important. Q. He's a fifth-year senior. Is his experience in college something that's valuable as far as being able to get him minutes early? DOC RIVERS: You know, I don't know. I don't care if he was 17, but I don't think that hurts. And being around Lorenzo, you guys know him from the NBA, he runs an NBA system. He runs a lot of stuff that we would do in the NBA, so that was appealing, as well. Q. He said that he had a horrible workout here. He said it was one of his worst. DOC RIVERS: Yeah, I try not to pay much attention to the workouts because it's three on three, you can't do a five on five, and so you try to watch the film, and guys, like I told you last year, I'm a big believer as a coach, I make the final pick, but I'm a big believer that that's what your scouts do. They bring it to you, they narrow it down for you. I think coaches for the most part mess the draft up because they'll watch one workout with a three on three and fall in love with a guy, and you can see the scouts are saying, wait a minute, we've seen guys for a year-and-a-half and two years 20 times. You've seen a guy once. So that's basically what we've done two years in a row. You know, so Gerald and Gary and Jason Piombetti, I thought those guys were phenomenal. They literally had the draft down to the final four guys of our pick, and I looked around the room, and that's what we decided on. Q. Can you tell us who were the other players that you might have picked ahead of -- DOC RIVERS: No, because some are maybe still in play, so no would be the answer to that one. You know, summertime I may tell you. Q. What's it going to take for him to contribute next year? DOC RIVERS: Beat out those other guys. It's pretty simple. But maybe he can move, maybe he can play the 3 some, too, and beat out one of those guys. It's a competition. It always will be. It always should be. But he has a tool that can get him on the floor, and that's the fact that -- a couple of them, but he has size and he can shoot. Q. You guys have now gone through the draft, next is free agency -- DOC RIVERS: Fun times. Q. It is. When you look at free agency, do you look for needs? DOC RIVERS: Yeah, you look at needs first, unless there's somebody out there that's so talented that they trump all your needs and you go for that. You know, but most of the time that is too expensive, so you go for needs. You know, our first guy, I'll be honest, is one of our guys that opted out. He's a little guy. That's very important for us. Q. His name, Darren Collison? DOC RIVERS: Yeah, that's a good name. Q. You promoted one assistant and lost two. Tell me how that search is going. Will you be hiring three or two or one? DOC RIVERS: All, one, two, three. Listen, I moved Kevin up because I thought in the office we just wanted to change some things. We wanted to keep improving our culture, and we want this to be a first-class destination and place for not only us, you guys, everybody, and that's what we want to work on. I think Kevin can facilitate that for me. Very typical to move him on the bench. He's only been on the bench with me for nine or 10 years now, but he's still going to do some basketball stuff, more as an observer, and so he's still going to do a lot of stuff with me basketball-wise. Ty Lue and Alvin were phenomenal for me, and I don't know if I'm in the norm or in the minority in this. I'm a big believer if your coaches can do better, I have never held one back, even if it's a lateral move. I just think it's a business for them, especially for assistant coaches, just too many out there that don't have jobs, and the ones that do, a lot of them don't get paid a lot of money or get better titles, and in this case, I mean, Ty just broke the record. I think with what he got, but it's good for coaches. I didn't want to lose either one of them, but I thought it was the right thing to do. Some would probably argue that either way, but I just thought it was the right thing to do by them, and that's why I allowed them both to leave. Q. Do you have a timeline in terms of when you're looking to hire? DOC RIVERS: Not really. I'm in no hurry, honestly. I kind of know where I'm going if you want me to be honest, and I don't want to get into names because they may fall through, you never know. But I'm pretty sure where I'm going. There's one that I'm not. I pretty much know, but I'm not sure with the one spot. Q. You guys had a major revamp of the front office only 10 days ago. Were things different in the draft room this year? DOC RIVERS: No, they were pretty much the same because the guys that were there last year are still there. Dave Wohl is now the GM, but he hadn't watched much of the college draft, so he was under instructions to not do much in the draft as far as just kind of let the process go the way we already had set it up. Q. You're a guy in Boston that you would always take some time after the season to get away and figure out what you're going to do, and now that you have these front office duties I assume you couldn't do that? DOC RIVERS: No, I haven't done that yet. I haven't been home for one day. Q. How different has that been? DOC RIVERS: It's been energizing honestly because I think we have a chance to become a great franchise, so it's a challenge. I'll get my break at some point, I just don't know when that's coming any time soon. And I believe that's important for coaches. You need to get away. So I would say around the summer league time is when I'll take my break. But I like what's going on. I'm trying to hire as many people, as many quality people as possible so I can still do that, but right now it's just not the time. Q. You're close to certainty with the future of the team but not quite there yet. Is that still a tough position where the transition -- DOC RIVERS: Yeah, it is and it isn't this way. I'm doing my job. I know there's a lot of stuff out there and there's a lot of things that can happen, but after going through during the Playoffs, I made one decision, I'm just going to keep working. As long as you just keep working and doing your job, hopefully I'll wake up one morning and it's all over, but it's not going to stop us from doing whatever we want to do. So like the business is over. We have an open sign outside. It doesn't say closed for vacation or business trip, so right now we're good. You guys sat here for two-and-a-half hours, and that's all you have. That list you had, they didn't ask for one of the questions, right? Okay, great, thank you, guys. I appreciate it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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