Doc Rivers has quite a few critics around the league and you can safely count Matt Barnes among them.
We know this for sure because of a recent comment Matt Barnes made on Instagram.
This all started when Joe Johnson commented on a post which posed the question, “Why didn’t Lob City win a championship?”
“Utah Jazz broke that shit up,” Johnson said, referring to his Jazz team beating the Clippers in the first round of the 2017 playoffs, which turned out to be the team’s final year together.
Barnes then replied, “Nah Doc broke that shit up when he paid his son that money. He lost the team after that.”
Austin Rivers became the first NBA player to be coached by their father when he was traded to the Clippers in January 2015. Rivers would later sign a new three-year deal with the team worth $35.5 million.
The signing came just two weeks after the Clippers had promoted Doc to president of basketball operations, which made him even more senior than the general manager and meant he had the final say on all basketball-related matters. It’s a title he held while also coaching the team.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that NBA salaries back then were nowhere near what they are now. That means Austin Rivers’ $10 million annual salary was a significantly bigger portion of the team’s cap than it would be today.
The previous season, he had averaged 8.9 points, 1.9 rebounds and 1.5 assists on 43.8 percent shooting.
No wonder Matt Barnes was scratching his head when all this went down.
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