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George Karl shared his thoughts with The Athletic on the three best leaders he ever coached. He named Andre Miller as one of them and told a cool story about how, before a Game 7 against the Lakers, Miller wanted to give the pregame speech and inspire the team. Karl loved this from the veteran point guard. I looked it up. The Nuggets lost that game, and Miller shot 1-of-10 off the bench (but did have 11 rebounds and eight assists). I don’t know why that made me laugh, but it did.

Valid induction

Jokes aside, Rivers is worthy of enshrinement

The internet is full of jokes belittling Doc Rivers’ coaching ability. I should know, because I’ve participated in plenty of them. It’s funny that Doc has the most 3-1 playoff series leads blown. It’s funny when Doc is looking for excuses about why anybody but his own team or himself as a coach is at fault. And nobody is better at getting a forced laugh from the media in a news conference room than Doc.

He’s also one of the most accomplished coaches we’ve ever seen. Doc is an incredible voice for the less fortunate and speaks for his community regardless of backlash or scrutiny thrown his way. You know what else Doc is? He’s reportedly a Hall of Famer. ESPN reported on Tuesday that Rivers will be inducted into the Dr. James Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The announcement is coming on Saturday with the full list, but Rivers is expected to join Gonzaga coach Mark Few and former WNBA star Elena Delle Donne.

Doc was asked about it before Tuesday’s game and had this to say:

“I can’t (comment) right now, but it would be great if it’s true,” Rivers said in a news conference before the Bucks’ game against the Dallas Mavericks. “It would mean the world to me. I’ve done a lot. The numbers are the numbers, but it’s not — I swear — it’s not why I got into this, honestly, man. It’s the relationships. It’s the people.”

The resume for the 64-year-old Rivers is indeed impressive. Check out his coaching accomplishments:

• He has 1,192 victories. That puts him sixth all-time, 18 wins away from Pat Riley at No. 5.
• He was the only coach in the top 10 in victories who hadn’t been inducted yet.
• He has 114 playoff victories, fourth all-time behind Phil Jackson (229), Riley (171) and Gregg Popovich (170).
• His 2,053 games coached are the fourth-most ever.
• He won the NBA title in 2008 and made the NBA Finals in 2010.
• He won Coach of the Year in 1999.
• He was named one of the 15 greatest coaches ever during the NBA 75 celebration.

Some may point to his lack of conference titles or having just the one championship ring as not being up there with the greatest of all-time. However, he has as many conference titles as Lenny Wilkens and Jerry Sloan. He has the same number of championships as Wilkens. Both of those coaching legends made it into the hall. Don Nelson has more wins than everybody not named Popovich, and he never won the championship or his conference.

With how volatile the coaching circus is — some guys get fired right after they win Coach of the Year — longevity matters. Rivers has probably done his best coaching when his teams weren’t stacked. Like guiding the Orlando Magic to a 41-41 record in the 1999-2000 season. That won him Coach of the Year. A .500 record may not seem like an accomplishment, but Doc’s five leading scorers that season were Monty Williams, Pat Garrity, Chucky Atkins, John Amaechi and Darrell Armstrong.

He was in Orlando for four-plus years. He was in Boston for nine years and helped bring together a great team of players to find the common goal in the 2007-08 season. They dominated almost the entire year and won the championship. And his seven years as coach of the Clippers both led them to new heights and withstood the Donald Sterling debacle.

I’m all for the Rivers jokes when they apply, but the internet’s perception of Doc is not the same as the reality. If you’re very online, you may scoff at his induction, or you may understand what I’m saying about the way he’s discussed. If you’re not that online, you’re probably confused why people are so down on him. Regardless, he deserves to be a Hall of Famer, and it looks like he’s headed there later this year.

Now we just need to hope the Veterans Committee didn’t screw things up by keeping Marques Johnson out. I guess we’ll find out sometime between now and Saturday.

 The last 24

👟 Just for kicks. Ever wonder how many pairs of shoes an NBA player goes through in a season? Our James Edwards found that the number greatly varies — and that players have quirky relationships with their sneakers.

💰 Local ties. A member of the Blazers’ new ownership group is a 34-year-old Portland resident. Meet Sheel Tyle.

👌 Back soon? Steph Curry has been going through all the training to get back from his knee injury. He could play on Sunday!

🇨🇦 He’s back! Former Raptors GM Masai Ujiri is returning to the pro basketball world. He’s joining the ownership group of the Toronto WNBA squad. 

💰 Full pay. The Bulls waived Jaden Ivey hours after he went on a social media anti-LGBTQ rant. He’s getting his entire salary.

Stream the NBA on Fubo (try it for free!) and catch out-of-market games on League Pass.

About last night

Rockets prolong Knicks’ road woes

Rockets 111, Knicks 94: A 37-21 first quarter gave Houston a big advantage, and it never really worried about losing control. Kevin Durant led the Rockets with 27 points, and he (eight), Amen Thompson (eight) and Alperen Şengün (10) combined for 26 assists. The Rockets had 35 assisted baskets, while the Knicks had 36 total buckets. Jalen Brunson was held to 12 points on 14 shots.

The Knicks (48-28) are 0-3 on their road trip and haven’t cracked more than 103 points against the Thunder, Rockets and Hornets. Houston (46-29) has the same record as the Timberwolves, but Minnesota owns the tiebreaker for the No. 5 seed.

Lakers 127, Cavaliers 113: L.A. outscored the Cavaliers 78-49 in the second and third quarters combined. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Luka Dončić dropped 42 points in addition to 12 assists to shred the Cavs’ defense. Austin Reaves added 19 points, and Deandre Ayton had 18 points and nine rebounds. LeBron James also put up 14 points, six assists and five rebounds.

Did you know that LeBron is second in fast-break points this season? We’re talking about the whole league. Only Tyrese Maxey (355) has more than James (312). Not bad for a 41-year-old with sciatica. The Lakers have clinched the Pacific Division title, if you care about that kind of thing.

Pistons 127, Raptors 116: Jalen Duren had 31 points to push the Pistons to 7-2 since Cade Cunningham suffered a collapsed lung. During this stretch, Duren is averaging 25 points on 70 percent from the field and 88.2 percent from the free-throw line.

Magic 115, Suns 111: This was an ugly one, with 45 combined turnovers and 76 combined free-throw attempts. Desmond Bane’s 21 points and Jalen Suggs’ 20 were enough to overcome 34 from Devin Booker. Orlando (40-35) is a game behind Philly for seventh in the East.

Blazers 114, Clippers 104: Deni Avdija had 28 points, 11 boards and eight assists to close the gap on the Clippers in the standings. Portland (39-38) is now just a half-game behind LA for eighth in the West. Jrue Holiday had 30, and Scoot Henderson put in 15 points.

Let’s dive into the Dunk Tank!

• Hornets 117, Nets 86: Brandon Miller had 25 points, and the Brooklyn starters combined for 38 total. Tank score for the Nets is 10/10.
• Bucks 123, Mavs 99: Ryan Rollins scored 24 points, Cooper Flagg had 19 and Alex Antetokounmpo made his NBA debut to make the Antetokounmpo brothers the first trio of brothers to play on the same NBA roster. Tank score for Milwaukee is 1/10. Tank score for Dallas is 10/10.

🤯 Stat!

A truly mind-blowing statistic was shared on social media yesterday in an infographic by a Spurs fan account. This quickly got passed around a couple of group chats I’m in, and everybody had a great laugh about it. Unfortunately, it’s at the Washington Wizards’ expense.

Apparently, it’s been a rough … three decades for Washington? This stat compares the Wizards’ record versus Tim Duncan since 1997. Yes, the same Duncan who retired after the 2015-16 season — 10 years ago:

You mean to tell me that in the last 29 years, Duncan has 29 more victories than the entire Wizards franchise? That can’t be true! Just for funsies, I wanted to look at how many franchises had won more games than Duncan since he entered the league in 1997. That’s when I became even more baffled.

Because a quick run through Stathead on Basketball Reference showed me that this “Duncan versus the Wizards win total” statistic is not accurate. It’s actually so much worse than the graphic shows.The Wizards have only won 929 games since Duncan entered the league. So let’s fix that graphic:

They’re actually 72 victories behind a player who left the game a decade ago. Even if you include the Wizards’ playoff victories during that time, it only adds 30 wins to their total. And we don’t want to add the playoff wins of Duncan on top of that total. Because he has 157 wins. The tally is actually 1,158 versus 959. That’s 199 more wins since 1997 by Duncan than the Wizards. 🤯