LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 17, 2020

Doc Rivers

Press Conference

Q. 18 or 36 yesterday?

DOC RIVERS: 18.

Q. The exhibitions, are you going to -- will they carry a little more emphasis than run-of-the-mill preseason games just because you do want to maybe try some things, or are they kind of just like necessary evils and you've got to get through those three before you can get to --

DOC RIVERS: Well, I think we should call them preseason games really, because other than the first game really where the minutes structure may be a little different, we have refs, right, and they're 12-minute quarters. I think we made a mistake by calling them scrimmages. They're probably preseason games, and that is up to each team to do whatever they want to do in them. I typically try a lot of stuff in those games just because it's a different opponent.

Q. Have any new guys arrived on campus since we last chatted? And with "Black Lives Matter" painted on the court and players wearing messages on their jersey, is there a way you or the Coaches' Association plan to bring attention to the cause on game day, whether that's wearing something or some other measures?

DOC RIVERS: Yeah, I mean, the Coaches' Association has been great, Rick Carlisle and Lloyd Pierce really. They've been fantastic. We have weekly meetings, all the head coaches. We've had a couple where the entire coaching community and NBA have done Zoom sessions. Yeah, we plan on doing a lot of stuff, with tee shirts or with pins. But we also plan on talking. You know, voting is so important. You can put that under Black Lives Matter or just in general, we need to vote. So I think that's going to be a major focus coming out of the Coaches' Association.

Q. How has the conditioning as well as the continuity been so far from the guys?

DOC RIVERS: You know, I don't know. I go back and forth. There's days I think our conditioning is great, and it is, and then there's days I don't know if our conditioning is ready for an NBA game. Practice-wise our guys are hanging in there doing great. Continuity will take time. You can see that. That's been the thing that I would say -- especially with us being a new team together and had made a lot of different trades right before the trade deadline, you can see we need to be in the gym.

Q. Have any new guys showed up yet, and with the scrimmages coming up, how concerned are you with guys being a little bit behind, because I know you guys only have three of those games.

DOC RIVERS: Well, there's nothing you can do about it so I don't have a lot of concern about it. It's real. But as far as guys that have showed up and not showed up, we don't talk about that, so we're going to continue to not talk about it.

Q. Wondering there on campus, are there reminders about COVID and just precautions and stuff? What do you see?

DOC RIVERS: Yeah, you can't go anywhere without being reminded. You've got to scan in everywhere with this thing. Every building you go in there's a temperature check. Everyone is wearing masks. I don't know, I have not felt safer in any other place since COVID started; I will say that. You just feel like we have temperature checks, we have this health app that we have to do every morning. Again, I think the NBA has done a sensational job. I can't imagine the planning that has gone into all this stuff, and guys are doing a great job.

Q. I've got a question about the preseason games as you call them: How are you approaching these preseason games, and is your playoff rotation pretty much set, or are you allowing the guys to play their way into playing time for the Playoffs once the Playoffs begin?

DOC RIVERS: Yeah, it's pretty much we know who we want to play, but as far as the rotations and the minutes, I think that's still a little bit in flux. We'll see. The preseason games you kind of decide on what you're going to do going by how you're practicing. You know, if you think your team is practicing extremely well and they've done it for a long time, then you'll probably be less in the preseason games. If you think you need more scrimmaging, you'll probably play more, so that's how I'm going to look at it.