Doc Rivers said he always knew he could coach. Danny Ainge seconded the notion whenever given the opportunity.
For three-plus years, a critical fandom wasn't so sure. Everybody wanted to like the guy. Smart, extremely personable and thoroughly knowledgeable about the game, even the most skeptical wanted to give Rivers the benefit of the doubt.
But a 45-win season that included a first-round implosion followed by a 33-win season, then a 24-win campaign, made it hard for his supporters to remain supportive and easy for critics to pick apart a coach who'd never won a playoff series.
Then Ainge gave Rivers a contract extension coming off a season in which the Celtics endured a franchise-worst 18-game losing streak and had the second-worst record in the league. In doing so, the Celtics executive director of basketball operations said he thought Xs and Os were overrated. He said that Rivers was a leader in ways many fans couldn't understand. He laughed at the realization that a 24-win coach probably had never gotten a contract extension in the history of the NBA.
Many around New England - the ones who stuck with the team feverishly while most others simply turned their attention to the Red Sox and Patriots - didn't find it quite so amusing. There was not yet a Ray Allen in Boston, and the Kevin Garnett trade was months away. Rivers still had a very young team that figured to get even younger in the upcoming draft, a star player in Paul Pierce growing weary of rebuilding, and an affable nature about the whole thing that would always subtly note how none of this was really his fault.
It seemed a recipe for disaster, a formula from which the sinking coach never resurfaces on the other side of the punishing wave of losses. But Rivers felt he would be the exception. At the very least, he would be well-paid.
Then came the trades. Then came the coach's chance. Through all the talk about how he was such a good motivator and teacher of kids a year removed from their prom, who should be in English 101, his relationship with the high school brigade was always more of tolerance and understanding than that of enjoyment. He tried to work with the young crowd, but the generational gap of what even he knew as a young guard out of Marquette University and what they had no clue about always chaffed him. He was publicly supportive most of the time. Privately, he likely knew the situation was hopeless as long as it stood stagnant.
If Al Jefferson, or Gerald Green, or Yi Jianlian, were ever going to lead this team back to glory, Rivers would be watching the phenomenon from a television analyst's seat or a golf course. Had the Celtics not traded for Allen a year ago last week, Rivers never would have been where he stood two weeks ago - drenched in Gatorade, awash in adulation, overcome with pride.
``Other than (thinking about) my (late) dad,'' Rivers said of his first thoughts after realizing the 17th banner was a reality, ``just watching all the players - just all of them - and thinking about what we fought through all year. Seeing all the smiling and the celebration.''
It was a celebration 22 years in the making. Rivers said after the Game 6 shredding of the Lakers he was just happy he wasn't around for the full two decades-plus. But in the NBA, even three years of treading water, and occasionally dipping below the surface, will leave any surviving coach gasping for air.
``My first year wasn't bad,'' he recalled, ``we won our division. I thought the two years in between is when I appreciated the Celtic fans more than anything, and really on the road. I was amazed how many Celtic fans were in the crowd, just cheering. Some of them said, `Get rid of Doc,' but most of them were cheering.''
Not always. There was the one stark night last season, when the ``Fire Doc!'' chants were so loud at the Garden, writers felt compelled to ask the coach about them in a press conference following yet another loss. There was the game late in the season in which Rivers stuck with the faltering bench late and lost a big lead, when he felt the need to declare upon arriving at the postgame podium: ``I wasn't tanking the game.''
If the proclamation wasn't humiliating enough, that few believed him was even more indicting.
But, true to his word, Rivers showed this season that - given the right pieces at the right time - he could coach. From the outset, he stressed defense and sacrifice to a crew of veterans who'd always been the focal point of their teams, and young players who'd never won more than a couple of games in a row as pro. He managed minutes for the long run. He managed injuries to get players healthy for when it counted most.
In the playoffs, he managed the Celtics through two seven-game series and two more series of six games apiece. The team got stronger throughout the run, and the coach seemed to sort through his own playoff inexperience with moves that went from random to right-on.
Rivers met nine-time champion Phil Jackson in the NBA Finals and coached circles around the stubborn Zen Master. While the extent of Jackson's successful adjustments was putting Kobe Bryant on Rajon Rondo defensively - a move that worked reasonably well until Rondo's 21-point, eight-assist, seven-rebound, six-steal effort in the deciding game - Rivers adjusted through mounting injuries and changing circumstances throughout the six-game statement.
He used his much-maligned small lineup to perfection in the Game 4 comeback for the ages. He leaned on Pierce and Allen for big minutes and they responded. His bets on Eddie House, P.J. Brown, Leon Powe, Tony Allen and even Glen Davis in Game 6 all paid off.
Suddenly, the coach who could do no right for two years could do no wrong when the hopes of a region rested on him and the eyes of a nation peered in on his every move.
Rivers will tell you he always knew he could coach. Ainge will tell you he always agreed. The skeptics will now tip their 2008 World Champions caps to the man they once mocked so mercilessly.
For two years, so many questioned his coaching acumen. Even going into the seventh game of the Atlanta series, it was not a stretch to think Rivers was one loss from the end of his tenure in Boston.
Six weeks later, he is a New England hero. A model of perseverance. An example of the nice guy finishing first for once in a society when the good-natured and well-intentioned are usually blasted and buried for their trouble.
The true story of the Doc Rivers coaching legacy likely borrows something from his entire four-year run in Boston. Is he a good coach? Of course. Is he among the best in the NBA? That's still up for debate.
What is no longer up for debate is that Rivers was the perfect coach for this team of players at this stage of their respective careers. There was a moment to be seized for all of them this season and Rivers knew it, and knew how to get them to the point where they could seize it.
It wasn't always about Xs and Os. It wasn't always about rotations. It wasn't simply about motivation, or Muhammad Ali tapes, or preseason duck boat tours.
It was about knowing exactly what he had and knowing how to bring out the best in it.
In the end, that is a coach's ultimate responsibility.
(Scott Souza is a Daily News staff writer who covers the Celtics. His Courtside View column appears regularly in the MetroWest Daily News on Sundays. Check out his Courtside View blog at blogs.metrowestdailynews.com/celtics.)
