Doc Rivers talks about loyalty, rumors and the bench

Doc Rivers had his final interview of the season with WEEI's Dennis and Callahanand opened up about his thought process in regards to returning to the Celtics bench as opposed to last season, when he was strongly considering taking a year off to spend time with his family.

"Last year, they were probably more right," he said. "Last year I was absolutely leaning that way. This year I really never was. After last year's summer and going through the decision that we went through, I was pretty sure I was coming back and I was pretty sure I wanted to come back here.

"This is a special place. And I've said that before. You can't get a lot of these jobs where you coach teams like the Celtics, or the Red Sox, or the Yankees, and I have one of them. I work with a great GM in Danny Ainge and I have good ownership. So, why change?"

Doc also insisted that he had no interest in going to any other team during this offseason.  Many major media outlets (**cough**ESPN**cough**) wanted to try and tie Rivers to the Lakers' vacancy left by Phil Jackson.  If there's one thing that would have killed Celtics fans more than Doc leaving, it would have been him sitting on the same sideline as Kobe Bryant and Ron Artest.  In fact, Doc said that he would have had a "big problem" doing that.

He harped on being loyal to Danny Ainge, his players and the entire organization.  We need to remember that this was a guy that fans were trying to run out of town five years ago.  Don't believe me?  Then you obviously haven't looked at this yet.  Yet Ainge and the owners stuck with him, the players bought into him and the fans now love that he's one of their own.  In a place and time where coaches get moved like turnstiles, Rivers is looking to be the next Jerry Sloan (23 years) or Gregg Popovich (15 years), although he has a long way to go before he gets there.

Rivers also talked about his infamous bench.  He said that he'd love to have Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic back and, in a round-about way, said the same thing about Glen Davis.  However, Doc had some not-so-pleasant words for Baby, although they're 100 percent accurate.

"I thought scoring was way too important to him, instead of being who he is. Baby's never going to be a great scorer in our league, but he can score. What Baby has to be is an energy player, a guy who takes charges."

Baby's kind of a weird player.  You know he can score and you aren't completely surprised when he does, but you cringe every time he takes a shot or tries to go to the hoop because you know there's a 50/50 chance of something going terribly wrong.  When Davis is playing in his role and doing exactly wheat he needs to do and nothing more, he's extremely valuable to this team.  This was a guy who was the leader for Sixth Man of the Year at the All-Star break.  The problem is that he thinks he's a superstar.  Newsflash: he isn't.  Baby is a role player and a very good one.  He can provide some offense and has quick feet on the defensive end which allows him rotate very well.  He's solid and a contributor.  He's not a star or a starter.  Maybe there's a team out there that will overpay for his services, but it won't be the Celtics.