Doc Rivers Inadvertently Named After Basketball Legend

Glenn Anton Rivers, the new and much-celebrated Clippers basketball coach, wasn’t always known as “Doc.”

He got the nickname innocently enough, 34 or 35 years ago one summer day at a camp for young high school players in the Northern Illinois area.

“It was a Medalist camp,” Rivers recalled Wednesday, at his introductory press conference at the Clippers practice facility. Medalist was a sporting goods company that sponsored many camps in the area in those days.

Rivers had been identified as a top prospect by Marquette University, and assistant coach Rick Majerus was keeping a close eye on him. He enticed a reporter to drive along with him from Milwaukee to view “the best young prospect I’ve seen in awhile,” and told the reporter he would not point the player out, that it would be immediately obvious.

It was. Rivers, still a high school underclassman, was head and shoulders above the rest.

Majerus, who died last year after a hall-of-fame quality coaching career, took the reporter down to meet Rivers after the camp workouts ended. Rivers was wearing a T-shirt that had Julius Irving’s name on it, the fame Dr. J. Majerus introduced him as “Doc” Rivers and kept calling him that to others.

“I don’t think he rememembered my name,” Rivers said Wednesday, laughing. “None of those coaches at Marquette (Majerus, Al McGuire, Hank Raymonds) could ever remember names.”

Didn’t matter. When it came time for Rivers to pick a college to play for, Marquette got the nod.