Doc Rivers to Enter Hall of Fames in Chicago and Florida

Boston Celtics head coach Doc Rivers — who’s antsy for the NBA season to get going — will accept a couple of awards this week. The Herald reports: “Rivers knows his core — Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo, Kevin Garnett — will be intact, but there is much he still has to learn about his team’s composition. ‘It’s been interesting,’ he said. ‘We have, what, seven signed players. But as a staff, we’ve still watched film, we’ve prepped. We’re meeting in a week again as a staff. I know some staffs have gone on business like normal, where they’ve been in the office every day. I made a conscious choice not to do that, because you just don’t know. The tough part is not knowing the rest of your roster. But we pretty much know who we are. We’re not changing much as far as our identity defensively and stuff like that. But there are areas we want to improve on, on offense and defense, and we’re going to do that.’ As for preparing Plan A, Plan B and so on, Rivers said, ‘I think we’re pretty much at Z by now. But we’ll be ready.’ With the loss of Lawrence Frank to Detroit and the elevation of Mike Longabardi to the bench assistant coach job, Rivers has his staff set. Longabardi will assume Frank’s role heading the defense. Rivers, meanwhile, headed off for a personally “honorable” week. He is being inducted into the Chicago Hall of Fame on Thursday and into the Central Florida Sports Hall of Fame on Saturday. ‘It’s hilarious,’ Rivers said. ‘I told someone that the older you get, the more people forget how bad you were. But it’ll be cool. It’ll be a lot of fun — both of them. Chicago’s neat, because that’s where I’m from, and Orlando’s where I call home.’ The latter honor caught the former Magic coach a bit off guard. ‘That did,’ Rivers said. ‘That was very nice obviously. They still talk about the heart and hustle team. When they called, I was surprised by it and really appreciated it.'”