DOC RIVERS ADDRESSES CONTROVERSIAL COMMENTS

Clippers head coach Doc Rivers spoke to a large media gathering Saturday afternoon following the Clippers practice at the University of San Francisco. With the Clippers gearing up for a Game 4 match-up with the Golden State Warriors on Sunday, Rivers was forced to discuss a controversial and offensive audio recording released Friday night by TMZ. Below are his opening remarks: “I didn’t like the comments. I’m going to tell you now. I’m speaking on behalf of the team, so the players are not going to deal with this issue. We had a great team meeting this morning about it. A lot of guys voiced their opinions. None of them were happy about it. This is a situation where we are trying to go after something very important for us, something we’ve dreamed about all of our childhoods…we’re not going to let anyone get in the way of those dreams.”“As far as the comments, we were not happy with any of them, but we’re going to let everything get handled and that situation will be dealt with later. Right now, our goals haven’t changed. Our focus is on Golden State and it’s going to stay on Golden State.”“It upsets all of us. There is not one guy who is happy with this situation. Do you think I want to be talking about this instead of trying to stop Steph Curry? I don’t. I don’t like all the phone calls I’ve been getting and all that stuff. We try to keep clutter, that’s the word all year, keeping clutter away from our team. And it’s been brought to our team and it upsets me and it’s something that upsets our team. That said, we have something that we are playing for and we’re going to deal with that now. The other stuff we are going to deal with later.”“This is a distraction. I’m going to focus on my guys. I came here for them. They came here for each other. Our goals have not changed. Like one of the players said today, ‘When I was a little kid and I had a goal to win a championship, it was to do that. It wasn’t to win a world championship for someone.’”“As a group we have to stay together. I think the biggest statement we can make as men, not as black men, but as men, is to stick together and show how strong we are as a group. Not splinter, not walk. It’s easy to protest. The protest will be in our play.”