LA Clippers collapse: will Doc Rivers be fired for choking in playoffs?

By Will Stabley | May 18, 2015

The Los Angeles Clippers have been bounced out of the NBA playoffs in a historic collapse, but will it lead to head coach Doc Rivers getting fired? That requires looking at where the Clippers are just a year after the Donald Sterling controversy. They made it to the middle of the playoffs, as expected. Their collapse at the end will cause some to ask whether Doc should be fired, but as it turns out he actually can’t be fired. When Sterling was forced out, Rivers – who had proven himself elsewhere but had been with the Clippers for less than a year – essentially became the franchise.

Steve Ballmer, who has done a good job as the new team owner simply by staying out of the way and letting his people do their jobs, could fire Doc Rivers and start over, but he won’t. There’s no way a new owner comes in and gets rid of the guy who navigated the franchise through the mess the year before, no matter how ugly this collapse was.
Rivers isn’t going anywhere for awhile, and he knows it. That’s why he traded for his own son. That move worked out alright, as his son won them a playoff game. But no other coach in the league feels comfortable making such a trade, as it’s the kind of thing that could get a coach fired if it doesn’t work out.

I don’t watch the Clippers enough to have a qualified opinion, but it looks like a team full of inconsistent stars who suffer from a lack of steady veterans on the roster, meaning Doc’s coaching isn’t the problem. Others would know better. But it’s fascinating to me that even if he did deserve to get fired, he’s essentially bulletproof for a few years because he just happened to inherit all the institutional power created in the Donald Sterling vacuum.