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Doc Rivers pays his respect – in person- to Rick Majerus 12.08.12 at 7:11 pm ET
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In a whirlwind of a day, Doc Rivers traveled from Philadelphia to Milwaukee for Saturday morning’s funeral of his former assistant coach and close friend Rick Majerus.

“I’ve been with Rick since fifth grade for the most part so I felt like I had to be there. It was important for me,” Rivers said. It was Majerus who gave Rivers his nickname of “Doc” when he showed up at a basketball camp wearing a Julius Erving t-shirt.

Rivers then jumped on plane and made it back to Boston, getting back about 90 minutes before Saturday night’s tip-off with Philadelphia at TD Garden. Rivers said he didn’t give much consideration to not coaching Saturday.

“If I really want to [tick] Rick off, then don’t coach the game,” Rivers joked. “No, I didn’t give that much thought. Life is involved with what we do every day. You deal with life and then you deal with your job. I always try to separate them when you can. Sometimes, you can’t.”

Other notes:

Doc on Evan Turner and Jrue Holiday: “Jrue right now is an all-star, and Evan played like one last night for sure. He made a couple of incredible shots. His game-winning shot, he was trapped for the most part, he puts up a one-handed push shot. The blocked shot by [Paul Pierce] and getting the rebound and he had another one where he split our pick-and-roll [defense]. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s always done. He did it in college. He made three sensational plays. I think he’s getting comfortable in our league right now. I thought it started last year and I think it carried on to this year.”

Rivers had some good-natured fun with Doug Collins after being told that Collins expects to take advantage of the fact that Pierce and Kevin Garnett have combined to play an extraordinary number of minutes combined in their careers: “We played how many minutes, 51,000? We’re smarter. We’re the wiser team. I don’t know how you counteract that. I tell you what you can’t do. You can’t turn the ball over.”

The Celtics committed 19 turnovers leading to 21 Philadelphia points in Friday’s overtime loss. The Sixers committed just nine.

Read More: Boston Celtics, Doc Rivers, Dr. J, Evan Turner Print  |  Email  |  Bark It Up!  |  Digg It
  • Andy

    Heck, now North Dakota can have a competitive MLB team if it wants to.  How about the “Badlanders”?

  • Jwsuther

    This is no mark against you, Alex (you do fine work), but isn’t it absurd that it is news that a sports organization is saying that it is “mindful of its finances” when it is putting up almost $200 mill. just on its player payroll?  They’re businesses, after all. They have bottom lines to fulfill – it makes sense that they wouldn’t make a new $200 million commitment each off-season.  There are diminishing returns after a certain point – money doesn’t guarantee success (and, apparently, spending it doesn’t automatically create loyal fans).

    • EarlSweatshirt

      That $200m is a relative drop in the bucket with their revenue streams.  Have you seen NESN’s value lately?

  • EarlSweatshirt

    Except the Red Sox and Yankees have proven they can support this type of payroll, turn a profit, all while their franchise goes up in value.  What will the Red Sox do with the money saved?  They can’t reinvest in the draft, the new CBA caps spending there, they’ll be spending less.  They can’t reinvest in the IFA, the new CBA also caps spending there.  So basically, the Red Sox will just have a bigger profit margin, all while they increase revenue streams.  I get it, it makes business sense, but from a fan’s perspective it’s frustrating.  The rich get richer while they have no ability to tangibily reinvest the money into the on field product.  I understand supply and demand, but ticket prices will continue to rise, while draft spending and IFA spending are down, and the MLB payroll will be capped and perhaps marginally decline.  This new CBA is awful.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_36YTLZYVFN7VOSWTZ2YIVPDJ2E Raymond

    What people dont seem to be talking about is this 189 million deadline is basically a resetting of the clock so to speak!After getting under the cap,it will take several years of going over it again to get back to the 50% threshold…so the yankees will load up again right after they accomplish this level,and in doing so they will once again be players in free agency!Between Rivera,Burnett,Soriano,Jeter,Swisher,Kuroda ect ect..they are absolutely going to be able to do this while at the same time extending Granderson and Cano and adding a Hamels or Greinke…

    • EarlSweatshirt

      I don’t see how you figure that honestly.  Tex, Arod, and Sabathia alone make 74.4m in AAV (which for lux tax purposes is all that matters).  Cano, Granderson, and Hamels/Greinke are good bets to average 20m AAV each.  So that’s what, ~134.4m tied up into 6 players?  That leaves ~54.6m for the other 19 spots.  Guys like Pineda, Gardner, Robertson, and Nova will be receiving substantial raises by then and eat up most of that remaining money.  The Yankees absolutely need Banuelos and Betances to become top of the line pitchers to make this work, and their track record in developing top of the rotation pitchers is fairly terrible in the past 10 years.

  • jward23

    “Teams that play in the top half market sizes will no longer be eligible to receive revenue sharing money”

     Finally, an explanation for the “rebate” which has been mentioned without comment in numerous other articles. So how are these markets calculated, who does the calculating and how often is this reviewed? I’d really like to see a list, too. Once an agreement is reach on the definition of a market size, the next logical step would be to see which teams aren’t spending enough money to compete. It should also identify once and for all how bad a market Tampa is.

    Thanks, as usual, Alex, for producing a interesting, enlightening article. So refreshing compared to the usual pablum and BS everywhere else (including some writers here, too).

    • LeftBrain

      Tampa is a terrible market.  The problem is, MLB needs 30 teams, and is closer to adding two than subtracting two.  What market (other than NY, which has territorially issues) is better than Tampa right now?  I just don’t see it.

      • Smcneil

        How about PHiladelphia, Pittsburgh, Austin,  or New Oreleans? Just wondering…

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