On Sunday, Clippers head coach Doc Rivers said that he believes DeAndre Jordan is "clearly" the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year. He even went as far as to say that he doesn't think the DPOY race is close this season.
"If anybody else gets that award," he said, "we need to have an investigation."
ESPN writer Tom Haberstroh doesn't agree, though. So on Wednesday, he published a piece called "C'mon, Doc; Jordan's Not DPOY," and it got under Rivers' skin. The coach was so upset with it that, earlier today, he told reporters that he "took offense" to the article. Los Angeles Times Clippers beat writer Ben Bolch was one of those reporters, and he tweeted about what else Rivers had to say about the article:
But Haberstroh himself was a bit confused by Rivers' response to his piece. Specifically, he scratched his head after Rivers questioned why he hadn't written more about Jordan's rebounding, because he had written at length about it. So Haberstroh responded to Rivers' comments a short time later:
So did Rivers just miss that part of the piece or…?
Well, as it turns out, no. Eventually, Rivers admitted that he hadn't actually read the article. Instead, he'd heard about it from the Clippers' PR staff:
In fairness to Rivers, Haberstroh's story was an "ESPN Insider"-only story. And we can't tell you how many times we've started one of those "Insider" stories only to realize that we can't remember our ESPN sign-ins or, worse, don't have "ESPN Insider" access to begin with. But the next time Rivers decides to call someone out for doing a bad job on an article, he should probably, you know, read the article first. Otherwise, he's just going to make himself look bad.
If you're an "ESPN Insider," you can read Haberstroh's piece here.
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[via @latbbolch]
