Doc Rivers says Klay Thompson misunderstood his comments on Warriors’ luck

Klay Thompson did not take kindly to Doc Rivers’ saying that there was luck involved with the Golden State Warriors’ championship run last season, recently calling the Clippers’ coach bitter for that comment.

Before the Clippers practiced Saturday, Rivers stood behind his words but said they probably were misconveyed to Thompson.

“I’m going to give Klay and his whole team the benefit of the doubt on that,” Rivers said. “What I said is true — not the way it was said to them. I never said the Warriors were lucky. That’s unrepresentative of what I said. I said you have to be lucky to win. It’s a completely different way.”

Rivers had said in a recent interview with Grantland: “You need luck in the West. Look at Golden State. They didn’t have to play us or the Spurs.”

When Thompson heard about Rivers’ comments, he went off on the Clippers.

“If we got lucky, look at our record against them last year,” Thompson said of the Warriors, who beat the Clippers in three of the teams’ four games last season. “I’m pretty sure we smacked them.”

Thompson then went on to lament the fact that the Clippers were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs by Houston after having had a 3-1 series lead over the Rockets, saying he would have liked to have played the Clippers in the 2015 postseason.

Said Thompson: “I wanted to play the Clippers last year, but they couldn’t handle their business.”

Rivers added Saturday that he understood why Thompson was irked by his comment, but he clarified that there was no putdown against the Warriors in his words.

“I actually referenced my team when we won it. … You have to have luck to win,” Rivers said. “Now, clearly, it bothers them for whatever reason. That part I could care less about. But it was worded wrongly to them. If someone had said we were lucky in Boston, I’d have been upset too. I get that.”