Despite Utah’s star center Rudy Gobert going down on the first play of the game, the Clippers weren’t able to hold home court on Saturday night, as the Jazz stole a road win on the back of a vintage Joe Johnson performance capped off with a buzzer-beater to give Utah a 97-95 victory.
Chris Paul did his best to drag the Clippers to a win, scoring 12 in the final quarter, including a game-tying floater with 13.1 seconds to play. From there, Johnson calmly took the ball up the court and hit the game-winning floater as the final buzzer sounded. After the game, Clippers coach Doc Rivers wasn’t in the mood for second guessing. When asked whether, in hindsight, the Clippers should have tried to take more time off of the clock, Rivers went off on the reporter.
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Rivers called the question the “dumbest thing [he’s] ever heard,” and said that when you’re down two you don’t worry about when you score, you just go score, and that if you could score in one second you do it. This is, of course, how most any basketball person will explain what you’re supposed to do in that situation. When down, your only worry is about getting the best shot to tie the game (or take the lead), not how much time it takes to get it.
In contrast, when tied – as was the case for Johnson and the Jazz – you can be more liberal with the clock and try to get the final shot to ensure that, at worst, you go to overtime. Johnson said after the game that his primary goal on the last possession was to bleed the clock and get the final shot, but you can’t ask the same of Paul and the Clippers.
This isn’t the first time Rivers has ripped a reporter’s question in a postseason press conference. I vividly remember after Rajon Rondo was ejected in 2012 Rivers spent the first five minutes of his time on the podium discussing what happened there before moving on. Later, a Hawks reporter came in late and asked about Rondo, which caused Rivers to go off on him.
The moral of the story, don’t ask bad questions to Doc Rivers after a loss because he will take his anger out on you.
