“Rivers, who won an NBA title as coach of the Celtics in 2008 and will be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later this year, started the meeting by imploring his players to look up his résumé, six people in the room told ESPN.
“I took teams to the playoffs and to the championship that weren’t supposed to. I thought this was one of them,” Rivers told players in the session. “Either you’re with us or against us. If you’re not playing hard, we’re not playing you anymore…
Rivers showed clips of forward Kyle Kuzma’s miscues in recent games. Kuzma was a DNP-Coach’s Decision later that night in the Bucks’ 27-point home loss to the Celtics. It was the first DNP-CD of Kuzma’s career.
The session was among a number of instances that rubbed large parts of the locker room the wrong way and continued the theme of a seasonlong disconnect between Rivers and the players, according to team sources. When asked by ESPN to characterize his relationship with his team, Rivers declined to speak on the record.”