A doctor in the house: the courtside manner of the Orlando Magic's Doc Rivers makes him stand out among a talented crop of young head coaches - Interview: Doc Rivers

Basketball Digest, Dec, 2001 by Brett Ballantini

DOC RIVERS IS THE BEST OF A young breed of NBA coaches. In fact, among current NBA head men, only Isiah Thomas of the Indiana Pacers has joined Rivers in jumping almost directly from the court to the sidelines without any prior coaching experience.

Rivers' resume following his retirement after the 1995-96 season? Three years of broadcasting. But whatever his training (or lack of), the Marquette grad has embraced immediate coaching success with the Orlando Magic. In his first season, 1999-2000, he guided a Magic team that had been forecast to finish at the bottom of the Eastern Conference--a team that boasted four undrafted starters--to a 41-41 record, one game shy of the playoffs. He was named NBA Coach of the Year, the first time a coach of a non-playoff qualifier had been so honored. Last season, his Magic qualified for the playoffs despite struggling early and having franchise player Grant Hill healthy for only four games.

Rivers is a commanding presence from the bench, a coach equally willing to angrily assault a poor call and whisper immediate encouragement to one of his players leaving the floor. No surprise in that range of emotion; he captained some solid Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks teams throughout his 13-year career, retiring with a career average of 10.9 ppg. And Rivers' 4,889 career assists places him 39th on the NBA's all-time list.

With a new season upon us, and with the Magic a true wild card among the top four teams in the Eastern Conference, it seemed a good time to catch up with the man in the driver's seat

BASKETBALL DIGEST: What is your reaction to the new rules, particularly with regard to zone defense?

DOC RIVERS: I'm more of a traditionalist, to be honest I'd rather leave the game the way it is. But if it's going to help the league, I'm all for it. Whatever helps. Our league is in great shape, so I'm not really worried about the rule changes that much. You'll see some teams tinkering. You're going to see a couple of zone defenses played at times. I think zones will expose how talented the league really is. [Laughs] I really do. A lot of teams will shoot defenses right out of a zone, or spread the zone so thin with their quick ness that you can really attack some of its weaker points.

I don't mind something different. It's a challenge for all of us, for guys who've never coached zones, which would be me. I haven't coached much of anything. [Laughs] It's something new, and I'm looking forward to it.

BD: It seems as if there's been a lot of hand-wringing over zone defense, that it will drive down scoring and slow the pace of the game. With such an athletic and dynamic offensive team as yours, do you have any plans to outrun a zone and beat the defense downcourt?

DR: People say if they play zone, then you're really going to push the ball up beat them down and score. I say, well, why wouldn't you do that when they were playing man-to-man? If you can beat them down, shouldn't you just beat them down all the time? If I'm a coach who likes to run, I'm going to run whether you change the rules or you don't. If I'm a coach who doesn't like to run, I'm not going to run, whatever the rules. Neither way is right or wrong. Everyone does it differently. You're not going to change a player's philosophy or a coach's philosophy by changing the rules.

BD: So the rule changes, to a traditionalist like yourself, don't make much sense in terms of improving the game.

DR: The rule changes are good thoughts. I don't know how much they'll help scoring. Rule changes can't help scoring, for the most part. If you look historically at all the rule changes we've made, aside from putting the 24-second clock in, there hasn't been that big of a numbers change. For me, it comes down to playing philosophy and coaching philosophy.

BD: What's the biggest surprise you've encountered as a coach?

DR: I don't know, there's a lot of them. Off-court workload is one. [Laughs] I'm not surprised by a whole bunch, because though I haven't coached, I've been in this league for so long. But the things that a player couldn't see or a broadcaster couldn't see would be the things that have surprised me the most, and that would be the off-court stuff.

On court, I don't know if I would call it surprised, but I believe guys do want to be coached. Guys want to be motivated. I heard in my last four or five years playing and in three years on TV from a lot of people who said that players today were different, that they didn't want to be coached. And I always felt that was wrong. I know they do. I wanted to be coached. The players I played with wanted to be coached. I wondered why that had changed, and I found out it hasn't changed. Guys still want to be coached.

BD: You went very quickly from playing to broadcasting to coaching. What have been the adjustments?

DR: The hardest adjustment for me was going from a broadcaster to a coach. But overall, there's nothing harder than going from college to being a rookie in the NBA as a player. There's nothing more difficult than that, especially at the point guard position. You realize right away that you're not as good as you thought. But as a coach who hadn't coached before and jumping from broadcasting to coaching, that was a big adjustment also.