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NBA PLAYOFFS ROUND TWO: CLIPPERS v ROCKETSMay 8, 2015Doc RiversLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Three Clippers – 124 Q. Obviously we were all focused on Chris Paul coming back, but this guy named Austin Rivers had a pretty good game. Talk about how he played for you tonight. DOC RIVERS: It was great. It was needed. He was just very aggressive, and that's what we've been telling him to do, and he was that. I thought it started with his defensive rebounding, honestly, and that got him into the game. But it was important really because it allowed us to keep CP at the minutes. That was huge for us. So in a lot of ways, the scoring and all that was great. We love it. But the big picture was we allowed CP to get back in this series now, feel comfortable and not overextend himself, so that was all great. Q. During that stretch we heard Chris tell you that it's okay to be a dad, was it hard during that stretch to see your son have that kind of stretch during the game? DOC RIVERS: Yeah, you want him to do well, but like I keep saying, they're all my sons, and I really believe that, like if Lester or Matt had done the same thing, I would have been proud, because I see all of them do the work. So good for him. He knows the way I think, though. We've got another game, and you've just got to be ready for the next game. Q. Doc, Harden first went to the line in the third quarter. How significant was it to keep him off the‑‑ DOC RIVERS: Huge. I think you saw all game, every time he drove, you saw our guys pulling their hands back, pulling their hands back, and they had the discipline to do that. We didn't do it at all the last game. We kept reaching and reaching, and Harden is so good at attacking your arms and your hands. Even the foul on CP, I don't know if it was a foul, you could see CP was trying to get his hands back, because he's that good at it, so I thought our guys did a much better job tonight than we did the other night. Q. Two questions: How did you think Chris looked, and then secondly, Blake had I think seven turnovers. Did you feel like he was trying to do too much? DOC RIVERS: Not too much. I thought our spacing was poor. Then if you watch in the first two games, when we got the ball to Blake, everybody was running away. We kept running towards him, bringing an extra guy, and that's something we clearly can fix, because the turnovers hurt us tonight. I thought CP looked okay. I didn't think he looked great. I thought that as the game went on, he got more comfortable. Q. Are you able to enjoy what Austin is doing out there as a father in an emotional sense at all, or do you just have to be locked in‑‑ DOC RIVERS: Yeah, you have to be locked in. I mean, I would love to enjoy it. You enjoy it a little bit, but not really. I mean, I'm so focused on the game. Even when CP said that, it was like white noise to me. You know, we need him, and we needed him tonight, and he was good. Probably later I'll be more excited about it, but then right when I turn the film on, I'll be already thinking about the next game. Q. Can you kind of talk through from the moment the trade happened and all that surrounded that and the father‑son relationship, all the way through this now to hearing his name being chanted at Staples Center? DOC RIVERS: Honestly, I don't hear the noise anyway, so you know me by now. I don't know what's been said. I don't care. We did it for the right reasons. You know, so that was good. Besides that, you know, hearing the fans cheer your son's name is cool. Hearing the fans cheer any of your players' name is really cool. That usually means something good is happening in the game. And I know it sounds stark, but that's really where I am mentally with all this, you know, because I think you have to be. Q. With Austin going out the way he did, how much pressure did it take off of Chris Paul in the series? DOC RIVERS: It was huge tonight, and I didn't care who went off. I just knew it wasn't going to be CP tonight. If it's Jamal‑‑ we didn't care. The fact it was Austin was great, and it was needed. Tonight was really important for one of our guards to have that night because, again, it really allowed CP to just kind of ease into this. Q. Staying on that subject, 15 of Austin's points came in the last four minutes and seven seconds of the third quarter. You guys go from a six‑point lead to a 23‑point lead. Was anything in particular going through your mind right at that time when that was happening? DOC RIVERS: Attack. I've been around him enough to know that much. He's always been streaky like that. You know, actually the play before halftime where he stepped out of bounds, I felt like, oh, boy, I haven't seen him that aggressive and do that in a long time. I turned to one of our coaches, I said, I told Sam, keep him in that mode, because he hadn't done that, that little step‑back, whatever that thing is, and I liked that you could see his confidence, that he was going to do it. I didn't know he was going to do that in the second half, but that was a good sign for me. Q. You said CP just played okay to you, but what did his presence mean, the fact he came and gutted it out? DOC RIVERS: He played great, but I'm just saying his movement looked okay. I thought his passing in the beginning of the game set the tone for us. You could see, CP is one of the greatest passers ever, and I thought he set the tone for our movement. Q. Did you feel like Chris looked a little better in that second half? He seemed to have a lot more energy coming out the gate. DOC RIVERS: Yeah, they cut it to three, remember, we called that time‑out and the game changed from that point out, and I thought CP just decided that we're going to go get this, and I thought that was the step where, to me, his confidence told him he could play again, that stretch from whatever the time‑out was to the stretch that we got the lead, that changed the game for us. But more importantly, I thought that stretch changed CP. I don't know what happened there, but he was good from that point on. Q. What did you guys do in that third quarter to hold Dwight to one shot? DOC RIVERS: Not much. We're just playing our defense. We didn't have any game plan changes, to be honest, and I didn't even know that until you just said that. I'm not sure. Q. What was the overall approach? DOC RIVERS: Try to force him out of the block, you know, try to deny his catches on the post without him getting behind you, and then defending him. He's been effective. Q. Blake picks up two foul early in the game and you guys go to Spencer for just the fourth time in the Playoffs. DOC RIVERS: He was great. He played great. I told my coaches this morning, I have a gut, I'm going to play Spencer. I have no idea why. I like the fact that he can space the floor for us. I thought our poor spacing in Game 3‑‑ or Game 2 hurt us, and I thought if we could play Spencer, he can add to the space on the floor. And that's exactly what he did. Really happy for him. More importantly because he's been a pro. He's prepared every day like he was going to play, and when we threw him in, he was ready to play, so I was happy with that. Q. I know you already spoke to keeping Harden off the line, how important that was, but generally speaking you guys kept the Rockets as a whole off the line. What does that do for you guys to keep them from shooting so many free throws? DOC RIVERS: It is misleading because we do the hack‑a‑whatever, so the last game, that attributed a lot of the foul shots, and then we had dumb fouls. Tonight I was just happy that we didn't have the silly ones. They drive, they attack, and it's such a temptation to reach, and the fact that we're doing a pretty good job of pulling our hands back has been really good for us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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