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LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS MEDIA CONFERENCEMay 12, 2014Doc RiversCOACH RIVERS: I'm just going to open it up to questions. If anyone wants to ask anything, just fire away. Q. I wanted to ask you about the fiction of momentum. What is your view on momentum between games, especially a game like that one? You had some Celtics teams that came back from huge leads and then lost. Is that something that never carries over? COACH RIVERS: It can carry over. But I don't know if it does or not. It's a good question. I think Oklahoma will be ready. I think my job is to get our team ready. Once the game starts, then the momentum from the last game is typically gone. Q. On Blake, he took a lot of physical punishment in the last game, a punch in a sensitive area. How do you counsel him to keep his cool and composure? COACH RIVERS: You can just say Zach Randolph. It is hard to keep your cool. You're getting hit, I think at times illegal hits. I think he's been taking them all year and he's been doing a great job of it. I don't know if anyone has taken more punishment this year than Blake. In my opinion, some of them have been aboveboard and some of them have not been. People keep getting away with it. Having said that, if he reacts one time, then he hurts the team. That's what I've told him all year, that the tougher, stronger guy is the guy that is willing to take the hits for his team and keep playing. That's what Blake has done, so I'm very proud of him. We need him. Teams are trying to do anything they can to get him off the floor, try to get him to react, and he hasn't done that. He just keeps playing, and that's really important for us. Q. Regarding the situation with Ibaka, have you watched the tape and do you know if the league is looking into that situation? COACH RIVERS: I've watched the tape. I'm sure the league is looking into it. I don't think they need me calling and doing anything. But, yeah, I've watched it. I think they should look into it. But, listen, I'm more focused on our guys, our team. I'm going to let the league do their job. Q. We met Richard Parsons today. Now that he's operating as CEO, you're still operating the basketball. The draft is coming up. How is that going to work on decisions as far as basketball? At some point teams are going to start calling you to make trades. COACH RIVERS: That really hasn't changed. I've been doing that since I've taken the job. We have people in place. Gary Sacks and Dave Wohl and other people are out there watching all the players. They know what type of player that I need in the system that fits in. Dave Wohl has been with me forever, in some capacity as a coach, as an assistant GM in Boston. Gary Sacks has been with me for a year and has gotten to know me. I don't think it's going to be that hard for us. Just keep going. They're both going to be in Chicago this week doing their jobs. Q. Have you been made privy to the CNN interview with Sterling? Do you care to? If you have listened to it or heard some of it, what are your thoughts on it? COACH RIVERS: You know, I told you this I think a little while ago. What I've decided to do is any time anything comes on, I usually turn, not because of some protest or anything, I just don't need the clutter right now. I got the basketball operations. I got the team. We're in the middle of the playoffs. So for right now what I've decided to do is just kind of tune out, if you want to say. It's just right for me right now. I'm sure at some point I will sit down and listen and hear. I'll hear it anyway from somebody what's been said. I'll probably react from there. I'm just too focused on what we're doing right now. Q. What difference has Dick Parsons' presence made? COACH RIVERS: He's going to make a big difference. Obviously he's just gotten in the door. Today is the first time he's been in L.A. He's going to make a big difference. For especially the folks downtown, they have lives and careers, and they want to know if they're safe, where do we go from here. For me, in the fact that we have Dick and he can do that, I can really just focus on the basketball part. That's really the only thing I'm qualified to do anyway. So I think it's really important getting someone in place and being able to calm the nerves and do their job and allow everybody else to do their jobs. I think that's really important. Getting Dick in is a huge step in the right direction I think for us. Q. I'm not sure if you're aware yesterday during or before the game, but Magic Johnson came and was sitting near Commissioner Silver during the game. It kind of brings you back to a lot of things have happened. What was your reaction to that? COACH RIVERS: I was really happy that he came. I didn't know it till after the game. Actually, I was driving home and my wife told me, Hey, it's good to get Magic at the game. I said, Magic was at the game? That's when I found out about it. I thought that was very, very nice. A great gesture by Magic. I think it's great for our fans to see him there. So I was very happy he made it to a game. Q. In regards to Blake, he's been in foul trouble a lot this post‑season, probably more than the regular season. Is there any reason for that in your mind? How do you think he's handled foul trouble overall this post‑season? COACH RIVERS: I think the stakes are higher. I think it's a more physical game. I think at times they call it tight, at times they don't. I think for Blake it's very difficult trying to measure which way the game is going to be called tonight. I think he's done it pretty well. He has been in foul trouble a couple of times. I think what he has to get away from is the silly fouls, the reach fouls he doesn't need to get because we need him on the floor. But overall I think he's done a pretty good job. I thought last night was his best as far as handling foul trouble. Instead of being passive and worrying about fouling out, he just went out and played. That's what we told him in the huddle. If you foul out, foul out, but foul out being Blake, not trying not to get a sixth foul, and I thought he did that. Q. Are you aware that Mr. Sterling actually apparently apologized in this interview and do you have any comment on that at all? COACH RIVERS: Yeah, I am aware of that. I'm glad that he did it. I don't have much more comments than that. But I think that's what you have to do, and you should do it. He probably should have done it right away. Having said that, I don't have much comment more than that. I haven't heard the apology. I personally don't need one. But I think the right thing is always when you make a mistake you should man up and apologize, so it's good that he did it. Q. You mentioned Magic. He was there the other night. Donald did apologize. The part of the interview and the part that CNN let out that wasn't as positive, was he talked about Magic and had some incredible comments, saying he doesn't think Magic Johnson was a good example for the children of Los Angeles, he hadn't done enough for the minority community in the area. The context isn't there, but the statement is. How mind‑blowing of a comment is that for you? COACH RIVERS: Again, I don't know the whole context. Obviously I know who Magic is. I'll stand by Magic every day of the year because I've known him for a long time. Having said that, I don't know what's going on out there. I tried not to get involved in that part of it right now. Whatever it is, that doesn't sound like much of an apology to me. I'm going to leave it alone because I don't know exactly the context. I think it's safer to do that. Q. Today Dick Parsons said on the sale of the team, If we do this right, this really could become America's team because people like a good comeback story. What is your reaction to that? COACH RIVERS: Well, I hope we do it right, you know. I hope Dick is right. I don't know if we're going to be America's team and all that stuff. I've heard that a lot, and it's great. I just want to be a winning team. I think when you become a winning team, you do become America's team. We all love winners. For us to do anything, I think winning has to be attached to it. All else follows. But the winning part has to come. Q. In reference to all the Sterling stuff, is this clutter for your team or do you feel you've dealt with so much that this doesn't have the same kind of effect? COACH RIVERS: Like I said, I think it's individual clutter, it's not team clutter. I think there's a couple guys that I'm sure it affects. One day it does, one day it doesn't. The bottom line is I'm just not sure. If I get a feel like it's something that needs to be controlled or handled, then we try to do it internally. I'll find out more tomorrow. I'm sure all our guys will hear more over the next 12 or 14 hours. It's stuff that you as a coach would obviously like not to have to even look for or deal with, but it has now become part of our playoffs. I think that's the way we view it, it's just part of the process that we're going through. It's made the process more. But just look at it as that, just part of our process. Q. How much do you think the rest of the series you'll be able to get out of that small lineup that you closed the game with? Was it a one‑time thing? COACH RIVERS: No, I mean, obviously it's not something you can bank on, it's not something you're going to do full‑time or anything like that. They've gone small at times as well and been successful. It really is going to be a game time and game situational thing for us. Having those three guards on the floor makes it very difficult to guard us. We know that. But it also puts us in a bind defensively. The other night we did a really good job of trying to clog up the paint, make catches tough. So, you know, they'll adjust to it and we'll probably have to make other adjustments to it. Q. Is there any kind of intangible you can bottle up and take towards the next game? You talked about momentum a little bit. COACH RIVERS: Well, I thought we competed more. I thought we dropped our guard in a positive way. We stopped looking at why we were losing, what's going on. Instead, we just went and did something about it. I think teams have to get there sometimes. So if there is a positive to what happened, it was that. No one worried about them anymore, they just competed. They were playing completely to win the game. They stopped worrying if they were playing well or not. They just competed. I thought that was the most important thing I took out of that game. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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