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Doc Rivers not sweating about seedings, Bucks being stuck at No. 2 in East: "If you're good enough, you're good enough"
By looking at the East standings, the Milwaukee Bucks (44-25) are locked in the No. 2 seed and could even drop lower as the Boston Celtics (55-14) are now holding a massive margin above and are poised to land as the top team of not only the Conference but also in the entire NBA.
Regardless of whether the Bucks will be able to maintain their place in the second place, Doc Rivers is convinced that seedings won't hold any significant weight by the end of the regular season.
Nothing to worry about seedings
The Bucks have their fair share of constructive experience about finishing at the top seed of the regular season leaderboard from the previous years.
The Bucks notably dominated as the No. 1 team in the NBA for back-to-back regular seasons of 2019-20, but these two solid campaigns didn't produce even a single title. And the recent example that the team can think of in this context was last year, in which they recorded a league-leading 58 wins. But in the end, they ultimately crumbled in a first-round historic downfall against the eighth-seeded Miami Heat.
If there's only one thing that Doc would acknowledge, it's that every single team can demonstrate their competitive stand if they are truly capable of doing so come playoff time.
“I’ve never, in my entire coaching career, worried about seedings,” Rivers remarked. “Either you’re good enough, or you’re not. And that’s the bottom line. I think I’m going history lesson, but in 2010 [with the Celtics], if you remember, we elected not to play any of our guys in the last game; that switched us, I think, from the (three) seed to the (four) seed and our guys didn’t care. We made it to the finals. If you’re good enough, you’re good enough; if you’re not, you’re not, and that’s a fact.”
Availability is the best ability
Upon this notion, Rivers would prefer to focus his team on being healthy and available in preparation for the playoffs instead of exhausting themselves to clinch the best ranking they could get.
“I tell you what, I’d rather be healthy enough. And that’s why you try to make sure you’re healthy going into the playoffs. And then the second thing after health, you have to be playing well. ‘Cause if you’re not playing well going into the playoffs you’re not going to make it either. So you need those two things going for you – health and playing well.”
