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NBA PLAYOFFS ROUND ONE: JAZZ vs CLIPPERS

April 30, 2017

Doc Rivers

Los Angeles, California: Game Seven

Jazz - 104, Clippers - 91.

Q. Obviously it's over now, but are you able to evaluate the whole season this early on?
DOC RIVERS: No, no, I'm not thinking about that right now. I'm thinking about the loss and how disappointing it was for us and the fans. I thought -- I will say our fans I thought were phenomenal tonight, even when we were down, they gave great energy. I thought our guys -- we obviously came to play. I didn't think we played very well offensively, and you know, though they shot 50 percent from the field, I thought a lot of that was from our bad offense. For me that's really disappointing.

Q. Doc, when you look at the series as a whole, what do you think besides Blake's injury were the key factors for your team?
DOC RIVERS: Listen, they beat us. I'm not -- not having Blake obviously is a major wound when you take your best scorer, your second best rebounder, your second best passer off a team, but give Utah credit. I mean, they won the series. We fought our butts off. You know, Q did a fantastic job. I thought it was a well-played series. I thought both teams -- wasn't a lot of junk, if you know what I mean, in this series, it was just hard-nosed, physical, tough basketball the way we all like it. You know, so they won the series, and I think they should get the congratulations, and there's no excuses, we lost.

Q. What did you see as far as how the Jazz defended Chris tonight?
DOC RIVERS: Well, they trapped him a lot. Same thing they did last game to be honest. We didn't get away, and we just didn't move the ball great as a whole group. I thought CP was great overall. I thought he got a little tired. I thought a couple guys did. In the first half, we had Raymond at the table trying to get Austin off the floor because he clearly -- he was out of gas, and we just had such a short rotation. It was very difficult.

But I thought they did a great job trapping, and I didn't think we did a very good job after CP rid of the ball of attacking back. We lost our trust a little bit. We'd catch it and throw it back to CP instead of attacking. That was disappointing.

Q. In regards to J.J. not really being able to find his stride in the series?
DOC RIVERS: He just didn't. We didn't try to get him going at times, I thought instead of fighting it, use him as a spacer. Obviously I would have loved to figure out a better way to get him going. We got a basket for him late in the game tonight. It was a tough series for him.

But you have those. You know, if I've learned anything, I've had them with Ray Allen, with -- someone has a bad series, and the other guys pull the tow. We didn't do that for him. When one guy has not got it going or they're doing something to take him out, you hope what they're doing will allow somebody else to score, and we didn't do that.

Q. Did Chris tweak an ankle?
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes is the answer.

Q. You guys started the season 14-2. Do you think you ever got back to that same team?
DOC RIVERS: No, it's tough to get back to that team with the injuries we had. I thought we were close right before the season ended. Chris missed all those games, and then Blake missed those games, and then we went on a seven-game win streak to win the season, and I thought we had finally caught our stride. I liked how we looked going into the Playoffs as a whole, then obviously Blake goes down, and you're back to where you were.

The answer would be no. I guess the closest would be at the very end of the season. I loved how we were playing. But it is what it is.

Q. What's your outlook on this core group staying together moving forward?
DOC RIVERS: We'll figure that one out. I'm thinking about the loss today instead of the summer. I'm sure everyone will have their own suggestions. We've been reading about our obituary for about three months now, so I'm sure everyone will have that.

Q. With regards to that obituary that you were just talking about, there's been so much focus on that this season. How much, if at all, do you think that was on players' minds as they were trying to deal with this?
DOC RIVERS: I really don't think it was on their minds much. I don't know that personally. As a coach, it wasn't on my mind at all. What does that do for us when we have the next games and stuff like that? I think it's a great conversation for everybody outside our locker room. I don't think it's a conversation we're having in our locker room, I can say that.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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