Chris Paul reportedly told LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer that head coach Doc Rivers was a contributing factor in him bolting for the Houston Rockets.
Doc Rivers engineered an exit from Boston to avert a rebuild and play for a title. Today, the Celtics are on the verge of a Pax Celtica, while LAC is in reboot mode — a tragic irony for one of the NBA's most enigmatic coaches, whose future is uncertain. https://t.co/5b5Kb47ouJ
— Kevin Arnovitz (@kevinarnovitz) April 11, 2018
Rivers is said to have grown frustrated with the roster after four seasons.
That being said, Doc did pull off one of his best coaching jobs this year, despite losing both CP3 and Blake Griffin.
Per ESPN:
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer reached out to his former point guard. As a relatively new owner, Ballmer wanted to learn from his organization’s mistakes and invited Paul to share his thoughts about the current state of the franchise and, more pointedly, his reasons for leaving. When the two met over breakfast, league sources say, Paul stated that Rivers was one of the contributing factors.
More than half a dozen players from the 2013-14 to 2016-17 Clippers declined to speak on the record about Rivers’ role in the “dynamic,” but a reliable consensus emerged. To a man, they saw a coach who grew frustrated with his inability to manage a complex locker room and who began to act out himself.
“I was aloof last year. I didn’t want to be here with these guys,” Rivers says. “I wanted to coach, but this team was a hard team to coach. I’m aloof anyway — I’m an introvert — and it was a hard group to like because they didn’t like each other. For me, you have to want to figure it out. And we lost the ability to want to figure it out.”
