Come at Doc Rivers if you like, Celtics fans. It’s also open season on Ray Allen. But don’t take any of your frustration out on Kevin Garnett or Paul Pierce while watching your team struggle this season.
Since orchestrating his move to the Clippers in June, Rivers has been sucked into far more he-said, she-said spats than he ever seemed to in Boston. He weighed in on another Wednesday in a radio interview, countering LeBron James‘ comments last week about the differences in Celtics fans’ reactions to Pierce, Garnett and Allen’s departures in the last two years.
“Paul and Kevin were traded,” Rivers said on The Dan LeBatard Show. “They were traded. Paul was traded whether he wanted to be or not. Kevin was the only one who had to agree to be traded, even though he had already been traded. He had to agree to the trade. That’s completely different.”
Rivers insisted that being traded was far different from executing your own exit — as he and Allen did.
“You could make more of a case for me leaving than on Paul and Kevin,” he said.
Lots of Celtics fans will no doubt agree with their team’s former coach, but they should be careful of portraying Rivers’ words as gospel truth. If they yell, “See, Doc said it so it’s true!” then they are implying that everything Rivers says is true, and I have a feeling they don’t really believe that.
