Before I joined this blog site I have always thought of Doc Rivers as a great coach. He creates good plays out of time outs and he's a players coach often able to bring out the best of the players in the locker room. But lately I've seen a lot of people in this blog site bashing Doc Rivers. That at times I feel they get him confused with Ty Corbin of the Utah Jazz.

I just don't get all the hate. I know I've seen a lot of head scratching decisions in the first half of the season where they had a losing record and people just saw fit to say "Hey blame it all on Doc". But now they have a winning record and a lot of us have not yet come to appreciate Doc Rivers role in all of this. People are still saying he is a bad coach. Not after the brilliant play out of the Indiana game. True Armond Hill approached Doc to run that play but he didn't design it on the fly. It was a set they ran earlier in the first quarter. It could have been one of the plays they worked on even before. Now some of us are saying Armond Hill should be head coach. Wow!

As far as I'm concerned Doc made a great call trusting Armond Hill on that and that's a great hallmark of a leader. Being able to set aside your own ego and listen to those who follow you.

People are also forgetting that Doc is a big part of why the C's pushed Miami 7 games. He out coached Spoelstra on Game 5 that forced them to bring Bosh back and if not for LBJ's monster game and Bosh's sudden found affinity for 3 point shooting the C's would have won it. But that season was also marked with injuries especially not having AB, JG and CW hurt the C's a lot. But the fact that the C's made it work a lot of it has to do with how Doc motivates the team.

People are also saying he just won a championship because he had the Big 3. Well Miami didn't win it the first time around when they had the Big 3, Boston did. And Boston was primed to repeat if not an injury to Kevin Garnett derailed that. And if Doc was such a bad coach as many of us here paint him to be they wouldn't come close to being a contender at all.

What spurred this rant is the fact that a lot of fans don't seem to appreciate what we got. When Rondo was out we called him overrated despite superb playoff performances yet a lot of fans covet DMC or Josh Smith when they have proven NOTHING in terms of playoff caliber performances. Now we want Thibs and Pop to coach. Take a read on some articles on the Bulls site and you could probably see some form of dissent on how Thibs coaches his team.

And Pop, he is one of a kind and we'll never get him. He loves SAS and SAS loves him back. I wonder why fans here can't do the same for Doc?