.@LAClippers coach Doc Rivers once considered getting thrown out of a game to watch The Masters 🤣 🤣 pic.twitter.com/3Wt7u0ojWx
— GOLF.com (@GOLF_com) November 2, 2017
We’ve all been there. Huddled around a television or laptop during a big time sporting event when we’re supposed to be mindlessly throwing data in an Excel spreadsheet. For those couple hours, we feel like Andy Dufresne escaping Shawshank. Like Eleven leaving Jim Hopper’s shitty cabin in the woods.
Doc Rivers is no different. When Doc sat down for his pre-game press conference yesterday before his Clippers took on the Mavs, he knew that he would miss Game 7 of the World Series. He lamented back to his days coaching the Celtics, when he tried to get tossed from the game to watch Tiger make a run at the Masters.
As transcribed by USA Today:
“When I was coaching the Celtics, I think there were four games left in the season — everything had been wrapped up as far as playoffs,” Rivers said. “The Masters was on. And at halftime, (general manager) Danny Ainge tells me that Tiger’s making a run. He says, ‘Get thrown out! Get thrown out and come back and watch with me.’
“So I go out and, this is like the first play in the third quarter, I go for it, like yelling and ‘ahhh!’ And I want to say it was (referee) Jake O’Donnell, but I’m not sure who it was. And he just stares at me. Nothing.
“Then during the free throw, he tells me to come over. He says, ‘I want to watch it, too.’”
Back then, Doc’s contract extension with the Celtics made him the highest paid coach in the NBA, raking in $35 million over the that five year stretch. This just proves that no amount of money can erase the ‘fuck it’ factor in the workplace.
[h/t USA Today]