LOS ANGELES – Thrust into the starting lineup for most of the season due to injuries throughout the LA Clippers' roster, veteran guard Austin Rivers has quietly worked his way towards a career-best year while helping his team stay relevant in a tough Western Conference. And yet, what's garnered most of the attention and storylines during his tenure in Los Angeles is his relation to head coach Doc Rivers, and that being one of the sole reasons he was even on the team to begin with.
On Monday night, Rivers' name took center-stage when he was involved in a verbal altercation with Houston Rockets' forward Trevor Ariza late in the fourth quarter. The Rockets' sharpshooter then made his way into the LA Clippers locker room after the game, which caused a lot of controversy as to what Rivers might have said to incite that sort of reaction from the typically mild-mannered 14th year forward.
In an exclusive interview with ClutchPoints before Wednesday's game against the Denver Nuggets, Austin Rivers expressed frustration when his name made headlines on early Tuesday morning with many chastising his character.
“People can say what they want about me,” said Rivers. “It's frustrating when people attack my character and not my play. I wish people could just watch me play and actually look at my numbers instead of judging me and saying I suck before they even know what I'm talking about. It's frustrating because I've put so much effort into trying to help this team win. It does get frustrating.”
The play in question came in the final minutes of Monday's contest when Rivers and Ariza were seen in a heated exchange. Rivers revealed that he asked Ariza why he took a shot at Griffin with the game all but decided. However, Ariza thought he had heard something else uttered, which led to that conversation spilling into the locker room afterwards.
“All I did was say something to stick up for my teammate and suddenly I'm the reason why Trevor [came into the locker room]?,” asked Rivers. “Trevor called me yesterday. I talked to him for 45 minutes on the phone. He called my teammates because half our guys have played with him and asked them, “What did he say?” and all of my teammates were like, ‘Yo, why were you so mad at him? He didn't say anything.' Trevor asked Montrezl Harrell, ‘Can you give me his number? I gotta call him to apologize. I thought he was talking reckless and in that game, I was very emotional so when I saw him talking trash, I got mad.'”
Rivers understands why he initially received a lot of the criticism when he was first traded to LA. His career didn't exactly begin the way he wanted it to in New Orleans with two-and-a-half underwhelming years with the Pelicans, but at the same time, he also acknowledged that when he was moved to the Clippers to play for his father, he clearly knew what he was getting into.
“I can deal with people saying my dad gave me a chance and all that,” said Rivers. “That's fine. Is it true? I don't know, I'm not Doc. I do know that Doc does know me better than anybody. So maybe he might've known that I was going to be a good player. Or maybe he knew I could be productive for this team. Maybe that’s why he took a chance. But people discredit everything I did before in my career like being a number 1 high school player, being a lottery pick at Duke as if I could never play basketball before.”
Rivers played 165 games for the Pelicans, but was simply unable to find his role with the team that was lottery-bound every year since Chris Paul's departure.
“I wasn't playing bad in New Orleans, I just wasn't playing up to the expectations of being a lottery pick. Sometimes things don't work for people like this,” he says as he snaps his fingers. “It took me a couple years to figure it out and it took me to get in a better situation. Has that not ever happened before where a player has gone to a different team and played better. It happens all the time, so maybe New Orleans just wasn't the best fit for me.”
A source told ClutchPoints Rivers had two or three other teams with offers on the table back when the young guard hit unrestricted free agency in 2015. Rivers admitted a conversation between him and Clippers' assistant coach Sam Cassell, who he was close with for a few years now, warned of the intense criticism he would take for being the coach's son, who had been previously struggling with his game, playing a significant role for a team with playoff (and championship) aspirations.
“My father, who knows me better than anybody, Sam Cassell, who I'm close with, and all the assistant coaches said ‘we know how you can play, we'll give you a chance.' Sam Cassell used to call me to keep my head up. I knew Sam before I even came here. Obviously he played on that championship team in 2008, so I knew some of the guys that came here. Sam was like ‘hey man, we know how good you are. If people don't see it, they will, so we'll take you. Just know that if you do decide to come here, everybody's gonna think Doc's giving you second chance.' And I understand that. I actually look back as a man, put my ego aside, and understand that. If I was watching TV and saw someone's son playing, I would say ‘he's only in the game because of his dad.' I would say that, so I get it.”
The bright lights of Los Angeles have shown little mercy on the sixth year guard out of Duke, and if he weren't thick-skinned enough to take most of the criticism lofted his way, who knows what path his NBA career may have taken.
“You don't have to be from the hood to be tough,” said Rivers. “I'm not some tough guy. I'm not a badass. I'm not a thug. I've never portrayed to be any of those things, but I can't be a confident player? Everybody says I'm cocky. I don't even talk s**t in the game unless somebody's coming at me. People come at me, and if I was soft, I wouldn't have been able to make it. I wouldn't be able to last, I wouldn't be able to take the criticism and that’s why in high school, people either decided to liked me or hate me because I've always had this cockiness on the floor.
“How am I supposed to be good at something if I'm not cocky to a certain degree? I'm not arrogant. I'm cocky enough to believe I'm a good player, yet humble enough to know I can get a lot better. You have to or people will eat you up. Especially me.”
Rivers has put in all the hard work and dedication to make his dream of playing professional basketball at a high level come true, and it's shown as he's putting up career-numbers at 15.8 points, 2.1 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 1.3 steals on 42-percent shooting from the field and 40.5-percent from beyond the arc. He wants that to be the center of attention when it comes to his name, and not that he's some cocky player who still has a place in the league because he's the coach's son.
“I want to just tell my side of everything,” said Rivers. “I'm not asking people to like me. I'm not asking people to be my fan. But what I would say is before you judge me, why don't you watch me play. Why don't you look at what I'm doing? Because men lie, women lie, numbers don't.
“I'm living my dreams, I'm making millions of dollars to play basketball. I'm thankful man. I'm very thankful. And I hate talking about myself. I hate talking about myself because it makes me feel selfish. I don't want to talk to you about my numbers, I don't want to talk to you about any of that because that's selfish and that's not who I am. But nobody else gets ridiculed for doing f**king nothing like I do. I'm human. I put it away, but at some point, gosh damn, can y'all watch me? Judge me on my character and my play versus my last name. That's all I have to say. Watch me play. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna have bad games in the future. I'm going to have a s**t-ton of bad games, but I'm gonna have a s**t-ton of good games, too.
“Judge me on my play and my character and not my last name.”
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