zizozain
07-10-2015, 12:22 AM
'' It's always the agent'' doc and clips stay winning
Discussing one of the NBA's wildest free-agent flip-flops, Clippers coach and president Doc Rivers said Thursday that DeAndre Jordan was under no obligation to call Mavericks owner Mark Cuban after backing out of his agreement with Dallas.
"Typically when a free agent leaves, the agent calls," Rivers said on a conference call with reporters. "DJ was with us seven years, and when he first decided to leave, his agent called me. Some people choose to make the call themselves, some people don't. That's why you hire reps to do that work for you. This summer, I've been turned down more than a college kid at a college bar, and I have yet to get a call from a player. It's always the agent. ... It's part of our league and it's fine. That's the way it's done."
Rivers said he first learned that Jordan was having second thoughts about agreeing to a free-agent deal with the Mavs "maybe Monday or Sunday." He said the meeting with Clippers players and team officials, including owner Steve Ballmer, at Jordan's house on Wednesday night was "a great team-building moment." But he said it didn't quite live up to all the reporting about it.
"Guys wanted to stay to see [Jordan sign]," Rivers said. "I heard that Blake [Griffin] put a chair against the door, which was hilarious. But DJ left the house a couple of times. This wasn't like, 'You can't leave the house.' None of that stuff happened. We all were free. J.J. [Redick] came and went, I left. It's funny how it was portrayed."
As for why Jordan decided to leave the Clippers in the first place before changing course and signing a four-year, $87.7 million deal to stay in LA, Rivers said, "When you're being recruited, sometimes you can get enchanted with it, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's also, when that happens, you also have the right to look at it again and change your mind."
Asked whether he believed the contact that Mavs forward Chandler Parsons had with Jordan before the free-agency period began on July 1 was inappropriate or amounted to tampering, Rivers said, "If that is something that happened, I'm sure someone will figure it out. But that's not for me. Our goal was to get DJ, and we got him. So if all that other stuff did happen or didn't happen, it doesn't matter to us. We got our guy."
While Rivers didn't elaborate much on what went on in the meeting with Jordan, he did say that the complex relationship between Jordan and Chris Paul was addressed.
"The stuff that I heard about the hatred and all that was so overblown it was laughable," Rivers said. "But teams have issues; they always do. And so do families. Nobody on this call has a perfect family, and that's how I view teams. It was discussed, but all of it was just a good day as far as from a coaching standpoint that we had yesterday."
Despite the theatrics of Wednesday's turn of events, Rivers stopped short of calling for changes to the NBA's free-agent moratorium -- which, in this case, worked to his advantage.
"When people they make these decisions, they make it seem like it's so easy for anybody to make," he said. "These are career decisions that young people are making and career financial decisions. If the ebb and flow goes back and forth a guy changes his mind and goes back, that's life. It happens in business. It happens in every business. It's just that our business is the NBA and everybody reads about it."
http://www.cbssports.com/nba/writer/ken-berger/25237603/doc-rivers-deandre-jordan-didnt-owe-mark-cuban-a-call
Discussing one of the NBA's wildest free-agent flip-flops, Clippers coach and president Doc Rivers said Thursday that DeAndre Jordan was under no obligation to call Mavericks owner Mark Cuban after backing out of his agreement with Dallas.
"Typically when a free agent leaves, the agent calls," Rivers said on a conference call with reporters. "DJ was with us seven years, and when he first decided to leave, his agent called me. Some people choose to make the call themselves, some people don't. That's why you hire reps to do that work for you. This summer, I've been turned down more than a college kid at a college bar, and I have yet to get a call from a player. It's always the agent. ... It's part of our league and it's fine. That's the way it's done."
Rivers said he first learned that Jordan was having second thoughts about agreeing to a free-agent deal with the Mavs "maybe Monday or Sunday." He said the meeting with Clippers players and team officials, including owner Steve Ballmer, at Jordan's house on Wednesday night was "a great team-building moment." But he said it didn't quite live up to all the reporting about it.
"Guys wanted to stay to see [Jordan sign]," Rivers said. "I heard that Blake [Griffin] put a chair against the door, which was hilarious. But DJ left the house a couple of times. This wasn't like, 'You can't leave the house.' None of that stuff happened. We all were free. J.J. [Redick] came and went, I left. It's funny how it was portrayed."
As for why Jordan decided to leave the Clippers in the first place before changing course and signing a four-year, $87.7 million deal to stay in LA, Rivers said, "When you're being recruited, sometimes you can get enchanted with it, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's also, when that happens, you also have the right to look at it again and change your mind."
Asked whether he believed the contact that Mavs forward Chandler Parsons had with Jordan before the free-agency period began on July 1 was inappropriate or amounted to tampering, Rivers said, "If that is something that happened, I'm sure someone will figure it out. But that's not for me. Our goal was to get DJ, and we got him. So if all that other stuff did happen or didn't happen, it doesn't matter to us. We got our guy."
While Rivers didn't elaborate much on what went on in the meeting with Jordan, he did say that the complex relationship between Jordan and Chris Paul was addressed.
"The stuff that I heard about the hatred and all that was so overblown it was laughable," Rivers said. "But teams have issues; they always do. And so do families. Nobody on this call has a perfect family, and that's how I view teams. It was discussed, but all of it was just a good day as far as from a coaching standpoint that we had yesterday."
Despite the theatrics of Wednesday's turn of events, Rivers stopped short of calling for changes to the NBA's free-agent moratorium -- which, in this case, worked to his advantage.
"When people they make these decisions, they make it seem like it's so easy for anybody to make," he said. "These are career decisions that young people are making and career financial decisions. If the ebb and flow goes back and forth a guy changes his mind and goes back, that's life. It happens in business. It happens in every business. It's just that our business is the NBA and everybody reads about it."
http://www.cbssports.com/nba/writer/ken-berger/25237603/doc-rivers-deandre-jordan-didnt-owe-mark-cuban-a-call