Blowing a 3-1 lead once? Painful. Doing it twice? A disaster. But three times? That’s a reputation-maker—and not the good kind. Unfortunately for Doc Rivers, he’s been at the center of three infamous playoff collapses. Whether it was with the Orlando Magic in 2003, the LA Clippers in 2015, or again with the Clippers in 2020, his teams just couldn’t close the deal.

But instead of simply accepting the criticism, the 63-year-old coach has flipped the script, demanding credit for at least getting his teams to three wins in those series. Bold move, right? It’s not exactly an argument that many would rush to defend. But one former Los Angeles Lakers star isn’t just standing by Rivers—he’s actually grateful to him.

That player? Lou Williams. And if you ask him, Doc Rivers didn’t just help his game—he saved his entire career. “Doc saved my career… I’m gonna say that first and foremost, Doc saved me at a time where I thought I was done. I thought I was washed. And he brought me back from the dead. And I won two Sixth Man of the Year awards, and it rejuvenated my entire career,” Williams shared on Run it Back.

Now, before you think he’s blindly defending his former coach, Williams isn’t ignoring the elephant in the room. He was part of one of those brutal collapses, and he knows it. “I think we share a lot of the responsibility of what happened, not just Doc… It was on the players, but he was a part of it as well… That’s fair to say… He does get his criticisms, but he’s also going to get his flowers as far as I’m concerned,” he admitted.

But while Williams is willing to give credit where it’s due, plenty of fans aren’t as forgiving. They still see Rivers as the coach who lost a 3-1 lead not once, not twice, but three times—first to the Detroit Pistons in ’03, then to the Houston Rockets in ’15, and finally to the Denver Nuggets in ’20. Rivers, however, isn’t backing down. In his eyes, the criticism is “unfair in some ways.”

“I don’t get enough credit for getting the three wins,” Rivers recently told Andscape. “I get credit for losing. I always say, ‘What if we had lost to Houston in six?’ No one cares. One of the things that I’m proud of is we’ve never been swept. All the coaches have been swept in the playoffs. My teams achieve. A lot of them overachieve and I’m very proud of that.”

Furthermore, Rivers has some concrete arguments in his favor:

Doc Rivers’ defense of blowing out the 3-1 lead in three different instances

Let’s be fair—Rivers’ coaching resume isn’t just about playoff heartbreaks. Remember when he led the eighth-seeded 2002-03 Magic to the brink of eliminating the top-seeded Pistons? That’s not something just any coach pulls off.

Now, the 2014-15 Clippers—one of the most talked-about playoff failures under Rivers. They had a solid regular season, finishing 56-26 for the third seed in the West. After an epic battle against the defending champion Spurs, they moved on to face the second-seeded Rockets, who had the same record. That’s the one Rivers still thinks about.

“But people don’t realize that Chris Paul was running on one leg, and we were also the underdog,” Rivers pointed out. “Houston had home court, not us.” 

Then there’s the infamous 2019-20 bubble season. The Clippers, sitting at the No. 2 seed with a 49-23 record, had every reason to believe they could go all the way. But according to Rivers, his team just wasn’t mentally locked in.

“I had a group of guys that didn’t want to be there,” Rivers admitted. “That’s what bugs me. They wanted to go home more than they wanted to win.” Rivers acknowledges those collapses as part of his legacy, but let’s not forget—he’s still got 1,154 career regular-season wins and an NBA title with the 2008 Celtics. No blown lead can erase that. And that’s exactly what Williams referred to in his statement on Run it Back.

The debate surrounding Doc Rivers’ coaching career is unlikely to reach a definitive resolution. His playoff collapses, etched into the annals of NBA history, will continue to fuel passionate arguments. Yet, Lou Williams’ vocal defense, rooted in personal gratitude and career revitalization, adds a crucial layer of nuance. This dichotomy underscores the inherent challenge in reconciling public perception with private impact. Rivers’ narrative is a reminder that in the world of professional sports, legacies are not monolithic; they are multifaceted, contested, and ultimately, a matter of individual interpretation.