Doc Rivers

Doc Rivers Wants Out If Donald Sterling Stays

5:04pm: Parsons emphasized that he’d “try” to convince Rivers and the players to go through with this season if Sterling remained as the team owner, tweets Markazi.

4:47pm: Doc Rivers has told Clippers CEO Dick Parsons that he doesn’t think he’d want to continue as coach of the team if Donald Sterling were to remain as owner, as Parsons said today under oath during testimony in the Sterling probate trial, tweets Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com. Presumably that also applies to Rivers’ role in charge of the team’s player personnel as president of basketball operations. His departure would have the club in a “death spiral,” Parsons testified, according to Markazi (on Twitter).

“If Doc were to leave that would be a disaster,” Parsons said on the stand, as Markazi tweets. “Doc is the guy that leads the effort.”

Parsons, whom the league appointed in May to serve as a caretaker for the Clippers, also expressed concern that players would seek to leave the team, Markazi notes (Twitter link). The league has pursued a variety of avenues to wrest the team from Sterling, whom commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life this spring after a recording of racially charged statements emerged. Sterling has nonetheless lingered as he pursues legal action against the league and resists the sale of the team.

The trial is taking place to determine whether Shelly Sterling had the right to take control of the Sterling family trust that legally owns the Clippers and negotiate a deal to sell the team to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The $2 billion that Ballmer agreed to put up for the franchise would be tough to match should the judge rule that Shelly Sterling acted outside of her rights, as Parsons testified, according to Markazi (Twitter link).

“In my opinion its going to be tough to get this price again,” Parsons said in testimony. “If Steve goes away I don’t know how you get to this number again.”

Rivers took weeks during the immediate wake of the Sterling scandal to dismiss the notion that he’d walk away from the Clippers, finally saying that he had no plans to leave and pointing to the two years remaining on his contract. Still, the possibility of next season starting with Donald Sterling in place as owner of the Clippers is one that Silver wouldn’t dismiss in remarks last week.

And-Ones: Clippers, Afflalo, Duncan

The Clippers engaged the Magic in discussions about trading for Arron Afflalo this past spring, but were rebuffed after Orlando didn’t find L.A.’s trade offers enticing enough, reports Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com. However, there was some sense that the two clubs could later re-visit talks if they managed to get a third team involved in discussions. The Clips have been eyeing Afflalo for quite some time and came close to landing the former UCLA shooting guard last summer, according to Shelburne, who also mentions that Donald Sterling eventually nixed the negotiations.

You can find more of tonight’s miscellaneous news and notes below:

  • Spurs icon Tim Duncan revealed on “The Late Show with David Letterman” that he had briefly considered retirement shortly after winning his fifth NBA championship. “I thought about calling it a career…But I felt I could at least do one more year. I felt I was still effective. I felt I could still play and help the team” (transcription via Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News). 
  • Some NBA executives believe that the Cavaliers’ reported interest in Jabari Parker could just be a smokescreen to get other teams to ante up their trade offers for the No. 1 pick, tweets Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated. Among those teams is the Jazz, who are said to covet Parker if they acquired the top pick.
  • Both Howard Eisley and Brian Scalabrine are candidates to become assistant coaches for Doc Rivers, according to Brad Turner of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter links). Eisley has been serving as a players skills coach for the Clippers, while Scalabrine spent the latter portion of last season as a coach for the Warriors’ D-League affiliate.
  • Timberwolves president/head coach Flip Saunders said he’s in contact with other NBA teams on a daily basis, but was coy when specifically asked if those discussions involved Kevin Love, writes Andy Greder of the Pioneer Press. As Greder points out, Saunders said he’s comfortable with the current roster, including Love. “I don’t know about the prospects of us trading anybody by Thursday night…I feel comfortable with the guys that we have. If we can get something that makes our team better, we’ll do it. If we don’t, we’ll stay pat and move forward and enter into free agency on July 1.”

Clippers Hire Dave Wohl As GM

The Clippers have reorganized their front office, pushing Gary Sacks out of his position as General Manager, according to Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today (Twitter links).  Dave Wohl, a longtime league exec and assistant coach, will take over as GM with Sacks being bumped down to assistant GM.

In other changes, Doc Rivers has ascended from senior VP of basketball operations to president of basketball operations.  Kevin Eastman, an assistant on Rivers’ staff, will move into the VP of basketball ops role.  Rivers has had final say on personnel say on personnel matters since he was hired last summer in his coach/executive role and while it’s not explicitly outlined in the press release, that will presumably stay the same.

I am extremely excited to work closely with Kevin, Dave and Gary in their new roles as we continue to move the culture of the Clippers forward,” Rivers said in the press release.  “Our goals are not only to become a championship team, but a championship organization as well. I feel with the new structure of the Basketball Operations Department, we have taken a positive step in that direction.

Wohl becomes General Manager of the Clippers after working as the team’s Director of Professional Scouting last season.  Wohl has more than four decades of NBA experience under his belt, including a stint as an assistant coach for the Wolves from 2009-2011 and serving as the Assistant GM of the Celtics from 2007-2009.  He has also worked in various capacities for Orlando, Miami, Sacramento and the Lakers in addition to serving as the head coach of the Nets from 1985-1988.

Pacific Rumors: Rivers, Sterling, Kerr, Hoiberg

Doc Rivers hadn’t ruled out leaving the Clippers in the weeks after questioning whether he’d be back with the team next season amid the Sterling maelstrom, but he finally shut the door on that possibility Thursday. Rivers said he has no plans to go anywhere, pointing to his contract, which runs two more seasons, as Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports tweets.

  • Donald Sterling’s threat that he won’t pay his $2.5MM fine is immaterial, since the NBA would simply take it out of the television rights money the league distributes to teams, as Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com points out (on Twitter).
  • Some Warriors players are withholding welcomes for new coach Steve Kerr out of support for the ousted Mark Jackson, and one Warriors player suggests race played a factor in the coaching change, as he tells Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher.
  • The Warriors had talks with Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg before hiring Kerr, but there was no formal interview or offer from the team, reports Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group. Kerr and Stan Van Gundy were the top two candidates, with Hoiberg and Lionel Hollins waiting on the next tier, Kawakami believes (All Twitter links).
  • Kerr’s base salary is $22MM, with incentives that could take the pay on his five-year deal up to the $25MM figure that’s been previously reported, a source tells Marc Berman of the New York Post.
  • The Kings will attempt to trade for a second-round pick, tweets Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee.
  • A Kings representative who spoke with Jones mentioned Zach LaVine as a draft prospect he liked, though the team official cautioned that the lottery could change the landscape (Twitter link).

Clippers Rumors: Free Agency, Rivers, Sterling

A prominent agent told Sean Deveney of The Sporting News that he has clients who don’t intend to sign with the Clippers this summer unless Donald Sterling is “gone completely.” That indicates the Sterling saga will indeed have an effect on free agency, as there’s almost no chance the situation will be resolved by July, as Deveney points out.

“I don’t think the whole thing winds up with Sterling back in charge, that is just hard to imagine,” another agent told Deveney. “There’s the chance, though. There’s a chance you wind up working for Sterling. That’s the problem.”

Here’s more from a team that fought off the Thunder and a media circus to overcome a 22-point deficit in Sunday’s win:

  • People around the league feel as though Doc Rivers won’t leave the Clippers even if the league hasn’t completely severed its ties with Sterling by this summer, Deveney writes in the same piece. Rivers hasn’t said definitively that he’ll return to the team for next season after raising questions about his future shortly after the Sterling fiasco began.
  • The league believes it can strip Shelly Sterling’s ownership of the team when it does so with her husband, as we passed along last night, though Shelly Sterling intends to fight that interpretation, as she told ABC’s Barbara Walters“To be honest with you, I’m wondering if a wife of one of the owners, and there’s 30 owners, did something like that, said those racial slurs, would they oust the husband?” Shelly Sterling said. “Or would they leave the husband in?”
  • Pierce O’Donnell, the attorney for Shelly Sterling, cited the U.S. Constitution in his rebuttal to the league’s contention that it can take the team from her. Legal experts have emphasized to Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News that the Constitution doesn’t apply to businesses like the NBA, and lawyers make it clear that such a defense is flimsy, Medina adds (Twitter links).
  • Shelly Sterling also told Walters that she’s been speaking to attorneys for the last 20 years about a divorce, which could further complicate the league’s efforts to remove the Sterlings.
  • Donald Sterling attempted to explain his racially charged remarks and asked the league’s forgiveness in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

Clippers/Sterling Rumors: Thursday

Commissioner Adam Silver could scarcely have been more resolute in his press conference last week to ban Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life, but It doesn’t appear as though final resolution to the saga will be so straightforward. Here’s more on the battle for the Clippers involving Sterling and wife Shelly Sterling.

  • Shelly Sterling does not want to become the managing owner of the Clippers, but is hoping to maintain her 50% share and passive role while a new buyer replaces her husband’s active role, a person close to her camp tells Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today.
  • Schrotenboer’s source said that Sterling is in talks with the league, but didn’t give an indication of whether the NBA is agreeable to such a scenario.
  • Sterling’s attorney released a two page statement further detailing Sterling’s claim of rights to continue owning the team, per Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com (Twitter link).
  • In the statement, the attorney denied that legal proceedings from Shelly Sterling’s past are fair grounds on which to judge the co-owner, Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com passes on (Twitter links).

Earlier updates:

  • The Sterling family trust in control of the Clippers indeed lays out a 50-50 ownership split between Donald and Shelly Sterling, Medina tweets.
  • Rivers reiterated that it wouldn’t be ideal for Shelly Sterling to own the team going forward, as Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News notes (Twitter links). “That would be a difficult situation for everybody because of the relationship,” Rivers said. “I guarantee every person wouldn’t be on board with that. Whether I would or not, I’m not going to say.”
  • Shelly Sterling’s lawyer tells Tami Abdollah of The Associated Press that she “will not agree to a forced or involuntary seizure of her interest” in the team, which is a 50% share, Abdollah writes. Attorney Pierce O’Donnell said Shelly Sterling is considering divorce from Donald Sterling, and he claims they’ve been separated for the past year. O’Donnell also said that Shelly Sterling “abhors” her husband’s racial comments and believes that Silver “exonerated” her last week when he said that no decision had been made regarding any claim to ownership from the family of Donald Sterling. O’Donnell added that he spoke with the NBA on Thursday, and that Shelly Sterling still plans to attend Friday’s game against the Thunder.
  • A recording of a phone conversation allegedly involving Donald Sterling gives further indication that he’ll fight the NBA’s efforts to strip him of Clippers ownership, as Dylan Howard and Melissa Cronin of RadarOnline.com report. Howard and Cronin claim possession of an affidavit confirming that Sterling was part of the conversation. “You can’t force someone to sell property in America!” Sterling is to have said, according to the report. “I’m a lawyer, that’s my opinion.”
  • Doc Rivers and the Clippers had no indication that Shelly Sterling would try to keep the teamtweets Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com. Markazi points to a comment Rivers made last week in which the coach asserted that it didn’t sound as if she could own the team going forward and that “I think she knows that,” Rivers said. (Twitter link).
  • Shelly Sterling asked Rivers’ permission to attend Game 5 against the Warriors, then attended Game 7 against the team’s wishes, Markazi points out, adding that the team wants nothing to do with her as “co-owner” of the club (Twitter links). Rivers and other Clippers department heads are jointly running the team in the absence of president Andy Roeser, who’s on indefinite leave, while the NBA searches for a new CEO.
  • We passed along the latest on Shelly Sterling’s push to control the Clippers earlier today.

Western Notes: Sterling, Owners, Lakers

Donald Sterling has kept a low profile since NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned him for life and fined him $2.5MM on Tuesday. Sterling broke his silence in an interview with DuJour.com, saying, “I wish I had just paid her [V. Stiviano] off.” Stiviano, in an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters, characterized Sterling’s current state of mind as “confused,” adding, “I think he feels very alone, not truly supported by those around him. Tormented, emotionally traumatized” (link via ESPN.com).

More from out west:

  • On Friday morning, Clippers coach Doc Rivers met with team employees who were still upset and angry several days after Sterling was banned for life from the NBA, writes Greg Beachum of The Associated Press. According to the article, Rivers said employees on the team’s business side considered not working for the franchise after Sterling’s racist comments were exposed. Rivers also was quoted as saying, “What I witnessed today, you realize this thing has touched a lot of people. The people that didn’t do anything are being harmed by this, and I wish we could find the right solution, and I don’t have it.”
  • Bernard James, the player representative for the Mavericks, hopes the NBA forces Sterling to sell the team, but he also thinks the owners are on a “slippery slope,” writes Dwain Price of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. James said, “I’m sure morally, most of them don’t agree with what Sterling said. But them voting for him to lose his team is hard for a lot of owners. And a lot of them are scared that maybe if I (the owner) do something, or I mess up or say something, or be caught on video doing something I shouldn’t be doing, if it comes to a vote they could take my team. And this would set a precedent for it.’’
  • The Lakers search for a new head coach just adds to the uncertainty about the franchise’s future, writes Mark Lamport-Stokes of The New York Times. This is in addition to 12 of the 15 players on the roster expected to become free agents this summer, notes Lamport-Stokes.
    Read more here: http://sportsblogs.star-telegram.com/mavs/2014/05/james-believe-owners-are-on-a-slippery-slope.html#storylink=cpy

Clippers/Sterling Rumors: Roeser, Rivers, Silver

Donald Sterling has prostate cancer, as Linda Massarella, Emily Smith, Bruce Golding and Helen Kumari of the New York Post report, and his poor health might play a role as the NBA seeks to remove the Clippers from his ownership. The family of the 80-year-old could avoid millions of dollars in taxes if the team is sold after his death, as David Wharton and Stuart Pfeifer of the Los Angeles Times explained this week, giving Sterling incentive to stall and fight the NBA in court until his passing.

Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com has much more on the Sterling saga, and while her entire piece is worth reading, we’ll pass along a few notable revelations here:

  • Clippers president Andy Roeser opposed the idea of releasing a statement that disputed the tapes, Shelburne reports. Sterling prevailed upon him to release the statement, which argued that the recordings didn’t represent Sterling’s true feelings, through the team with Roeser’s name on it. Doc Rivers was “furious” about the statement, Shelburne writes, describing it as a breaking point for Rivers and the players.
  • Roeser has been in charge since Silver banned Sterling, but the NBA will likely appoint a trustee to run the team, according to Shelburne.
  • The NBA interviewed a third person who could be heard in the background of the recordings of Sterling and V. Stiviano, and that interview could help the NBA in its attempts to oust Sterling if the legality of the recordings is questioned in court, Shelburne writes.
  • NBA owners were confident that Silver would take appropriate action, reflecting the belief in the commissioner that they’d held since the 2011 lockout. Many of them had wanted him to succeed David Stern long before he did so in February, according to Shelburne.

L.A. Notes: Magic, Rivers, Farmar, D’Antoni

Magic Johnson earlier this week denied interest in buying the Clippers, but he’s apparently changed his mind, judging by his remarks Wednesday, as Ben Bergman of 89.3 KPCC reports (hat tip to Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia).

“I will be owning an NBA team sometime,” Johnson said. “Is the Clippers the right situation? Of course. It’s one of the premiere franchises.” 

The teams of Johnson’s past and perhaps his future have been most prominent in news across the league this week, and there’s more this afternoon on both the Lakers and the Clippers:

  • Doc Rivers hasn’t made it entirely clear whether he intends to return to the Clippers, but he says he has no interest in making the jump across Staples Center to coach the Lakers, observes Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link).
  • Jordan Farmar was a fan of Mike D’Antoni, but the soon-to-be free agent point guard doesn’t find the Lakers any less attractive now that the coach has resigned, as Farmar tells Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News. “I want to be a Laker,” Farmar said. “I like playing for Mike. Whether it’s Phil Jackson, Mike D’Antoni or whoever else coaches this team, that won’t deter me from wanting to be a Laker.”
  • D’Antoni reportedly would like another NBA coaching job, but the general sentiment leaguewide is that his success with the Suns was an aberration, writes Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. A GM who spoke to Deveney called D’Antoni a “one-trick pony.”
  • There seems to be a decent chance that the Clippers will sell for more than $1 billion, but It will take more than money to buy the team, as James Rainey and Nathan Fenno of the Los Angeles Times examine.
  • Cavs guard Jarrett Jack believes every player in the league should boycott practices and games next season if Donald Sterling still owns the Clippers by then, as Jack said today on 95.7 The Game, tweets Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group.

Clippers Rumors: Rivers, Sterling, Miller

The Clippers picked up a significant on-court victory Tuesday, beating the Warriors, but Adam Silver’s punishment of owner Donald Sterling is probably a significant off-court victory, too. The team would have become a pariah for players and agents, likely scuttling a squad that’s been building toward contention the past several years. Still, there’s no guarantee a key figure will be back, as we examine amid the latest on the Clippers:

  • Doc Rivers on Tuesday night still wouldn’t commit to returning to the team next season, as Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports notes.
  • There’s a strong chance that Sterling will sue the NBA on antitrust grounds, a source tells Michael McCann of SI.com, who outlines the legal ramifications of Silver’s decision.
  • Silver spoke with Sterling before announcing the punishment, but neither Sterling nor anyone on his behalf gave the league assurances that he won’t sue, reports Ken Berger of CBSSports.com.
  • Sterling will have the chance to defend himself in a hearing before the NBA’s Board of Governors before the owners vote to strip the team from him, as Berger writes in the same piece. TNT’s David Aldridge seconds that in a piece for NBA.com that also lays out the timeline for the NBA’s probable ouster of the Clippers owner.
  • Rivers doubts that the Clippers can remain in the Sterling family, an idea that union vice president Roger Mason Jr. opposes, but Shelly Sterling, the wife of Donald Sterling, wants son-in-law Eric Miller to take over the team, Spears writes in a separate piece.