Rowan Kavner
DALLAS – Doc Rivers and the Clippers are out to a 5-2 start after beginning the season 4-0, dropping games late against the Warriors and Rockets and coming back to beat the Grizzlies.
Rivers talked about the state of his team before and after the game against Memphis, as well as the start of Blake Griffin, who has at least 22 points in every game this season. The Clippers just flew to Dallas in preparation for Wednesday’s matchup, which is the first of a back-to-back.
How valuable has Blake Griffin been to start the year?
DR: “Blake has come back a better player. No one really gets to see the work that he puts in during the summers and now. I mean, he’s always the first guy in the gym. He’s so comfortable now with his shot that I think he’s no longer just looking for his shot, which is a strange thing to say. He’s mixing it up better and that’s because he has great confidence in it.”
What do you think about the way the wing rotation has looked?
DR:”It’s been good. I’ve liked it pretty well. We’ve played up and down, honestly, but I do like where we’re at with it. Closing games, we’ve gone everywhere. We’ve gone defensively in the Golden State game, we’ve gone with Paul (Pierce)–he’ll be on the floor most of the time. I guess the only thing I would say I don’t know if we underestimated is the fact that Paul plays so much with the second group, yet at the end of the game he’s with the first group and we’re trying to find time whenever we do have a practice to put him on the floor with that group so he can get more comfortable with that.”
DeAndre Jordan’s assist rate is up this year, is that something you’ve been cognizant of?
DR: “I have probably been blinded, but he’s a heck of a passer and I honestly didn’t notice it as much. We have found with him on the post when you throw it to him, we worked on it all camp and his patience, he’s very patient. He’ll wait until a guy gets open. He made a backdoor pass on a bounce to J.J. (Redick), which a lot of people can’t make. And so the more he does it, the more we’ll use it. It gives us another weapon, and he’s been great at it.”
You decided to foul the Grizzlies up three points late. Is that a late-game decision you want to stick with going forward?
DR: “I’m going to do it next game. Our league has a lot of players who make threes. I’ll take the chance of what happens. It almost burned us, but I’ve been burned more by threes than that situation right there. If you don’t have good bigs, you may lean the other way. But I’m going to do it 100 percent of the time.”
