Doc Rivers claps back at former 76ers veteran following snide remarks

Former Philadelphia 76ers head coach Doc Rivers, who was suddenly thrown into the fire in the middle of the season after being hired by the Milwaukee Bucks, certainly didn’t have a sweet baptism with his new team, getting booted out of the playoffs in the first-round in large part due to injuries to his star players.

Rivers isn’t conceding everything, though. Months after former 76ers guard JJ Redick hit him with an honest, yet brutal comment about his coaching ethos, the one-time NBA champion coach recently made his response known.

Doc Rivers claps back at former 76ers guard JJ Redick over brutal comments

Early in the season, Redick blasted Rivers for his lack of playoff success in recent years, pointing out his “lack of accountability” as the main impetus behind his teams’ failure to get over the proverbial hump or repeatedly blown playoff series leads.

However, Rivers isn’t seeing him in the eye with his comments. In a recent exchange with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, the veteran tactician implied that Redick’s remarks were definitely personal.

"JJ’s had a problem with me for a while, and that’s fine. When you coach, you can be called a player’s coach, or whatever you want to be called, but if you make decisions that the player doesn’t agree with, and in JJ’s case, we didn’t sign him back. With the Clippers, I stopped playing him as much because he wasn’t very effective in the playoffs. That’s all known, but I’m fine with that."

Rivers then noted that Redick’s best years came when the sharpshooter was under his wing. To be fair, while the latter posted his most impressive counting stats in his two-year stint with the 76ers, it was indeed his Clippers tenure that gave him that breakthrough he needed both role and minutes-wise.

With the Lob City Clippers, Redick seamlessly fit in as their designated gunner next to Chris Paul’s playmaking and Blake Griffin and De’Andre Jordan’s nightly showcases of superb athleticism. Before that, he was a lower-end role player whose role was inconsistent, so maybe Rivers was right in that aspect.

Funnily enough, Rivers and Redick, both 76ers alums, could have a grand way of settling the dust. The former will still man the sidelines for Milwaukee, while the latter is actually being considered as a head coaching candidate for the Lakers.