{"id":704523,"date":"2026-04-08T03:59:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T03:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/704523\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T03:59:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T03:59:21","slug":"shams-drops-tell-all-on-giannis-bucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/704523\/","title":{"rendered":"Shams Drops Tell-All on Giannis, Bucks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">\u201cRivers, who won an NBA title as coach of the Celtics in 2008 and<a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/story\/_\/id\/48395741\/candace-parker-calls-hall-fame-enshrinement-truly-special\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> will be enshrined<\/a> in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later this year, started the meeting by imploring his players to look up his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, six people in the room told ESPN.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI took teams to the playoffs and to the championship that weren\u2019t supposed to. I thought this was one of them,\u201d Rivers told players in the session. \u201cEither you\u2019re with us or against us. If you\u2019re not playing hard, we\u2019re not playing you anymore\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">Rivers showed clips of forward<a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/player\/_\/id\/3134907\/kyle-kuzma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Kyle Kuzma<\/a>\u2019s miscues in recent games. Kuzma was a DNP-Coach\u2019s Decision later that night in the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/game\/_\/gameId\/401810735\/celtics-bucks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Bucks\u2019 27-point home loss<\/a> to the Celtics. It was the first DNP-CD of Kuzma\u2019s career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cRivers, who won an NBA title as coach of the Celtics in 2008 and will be enshrined in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,6,3101,687,471,3967,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-704523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-portland-trail-blazers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nba-news","12":"tag-portland","13":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","14":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","15":"tag-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116367089034965180","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}