Rivers family pleads innocence following father-son ejection
Neither Austin Rivers or Doc Rivers thought they deserved to be ejected in Friday's lopsided loss to the Houston Rockets.
Doc was ejected mere moments after his son Austin was tossed from the game for incidental contact with an official, but the Clippers' head coach wasn't bounced for arguing that particular decision.
Rather, Doc claimed to reporters following the game that the referees didn't hear his pleas over a missed free-throw attempt that wasn't granted in what was then a 22-point game.
"When they threw Austin out for whatever reason, they called an and-1 on that," Doc Rivers told ESPN's Calvin Watkins. "You can see it on the replay, they absolutely called an and-1 and they forgot to give us a free throw."
"So I called a timeout and said, 'Hey, you forgot to give us a free throw,' and they didn't know what we were talking about. And I said, 'No, you forgot to give us a free throw. Come on, you guys don't know what you're doing,' and that was it."
Marreese Speights did appear to be fouled for an and-1 on the putback, but in all fairness, the baseline official J.T. Orr was occupied with ejecting Austin, who brushed him with his shoulder while protesting a perceived missed call. Any foul for Speights might have been missed during the fracas.
As for the younger Rivers, he insists he did nothing to deserve his ejection.
"I saw the video," Austin said. "I didn't do nothing wrong. I didn't do anything wrong. I reacted to the play; I had no idea the ref was there. I was backing up and I said, 'Call the foul.' When I did it, I was turning and he was right there and my elbow touched him."
"I've never in my career put my hands on a ref, and I don't ever plan to. He knows if I would have pushed him; he would have pushed back (but) he didn't go anywhere. I didn't mean to touch him. As he was giving me a tech, I was trying to tell him I didn't mean to do it. I didn't do anything wrong - I stand by that I didn't do anything wrong."
In the end it hardly mattered, as the Clippers suffered their fifth straight loss in a blowout.