Rivers no longer running front office: ‘Cool general managing, Glenn'

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You’re tempted, petty little tyrant that you are, to say, “Cool general managing, Glenn.”

You’ll see that Doc Rivers has lost his team-building responsibilities with the Los Angeles Clippers to focus solely on coaching them, and you'll hearken back to Draymond Green’s enduring putdown of the coach when he was complaining about Dahntay Jones’ fine for bumping Green during a postgame interview.

And then you’ll think that the Golden State Warriors and Clippers still have some sort of rivalry. And that’s where you’ll be wrong.

The Clippers and Warriors are two ships that passed in the night, and their relationship is that of planetary co-inhabitors rather than death-feud enthusiasts. Those days are now three years' past and never coming back. Indeed, the Warriors have no such rivals at all now that the Cleveland Cavaliers are in the process of going full cicada and disappearing for the next 17 years or so.

That could, of course, change if the Warriors have a catastrophic injury year or a series of other calamities befall them, but that’s not the way to bet right now. Indeed, without Chris Paul, the Clippers look like a sixth- or seventh- place team right now, a Denver Nuggets or Utah Jazz-level contender.

As they sort of were last year, and the year before. Cool second-round exits, Glenn.

But worse for the Clips is the fact that Rivers is still sort of the face of the franchise, and that’s never a good thing. Indeed, the worst thing is when your owner or top management executive is the face of the franchise (Michael Jordan in Charlotte, or until he was fired, Phil Jackson in New York), followed by the coach (say, Rivers, or Stan Van Gundy in Detroit), then followed by one player (Lonzo Ball in Los Angeles, even though it’s awfully early for that sort of thing).

The ideal setup is when several players are the face of your franchise because that means they are all worth notice. Like, well, you know.

But not everyone can be, well, you know. Almost all teams aren’t, so their faces aren’t as good. So say “cool general managing, Glenn” if you must. Rivers helped repair the nightmare of the Clippers, he gave the team their window of opportunity, and now it is closing. It’s a tale like many others, so yeah, maybe it is a “cool story.” Just not one he would enjoy hearing.
 

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