And the Worst Coach of the Year goes to … Doc Rivers

Yo Doc. KG and Paul Pierce aren't in the game. Can I get a shot now? PLEEEEAAAAAASE!

I know there’s an award for NBA Coach of the Year. Now it’s time we honor the NBA’s Worst Coach of the Year – or if we wanna come up with a fitting acronym, we could call it the DOC (Dumb Ol’ Coach) award.

Come on Doc Rivers. I know you were in the running for the Coach of the Year award a year ago, but what’s going on of late? I know injuries are holding your team back, but that coaching job tonight in a 128-127 loss at Chicago was brutal. Straight up brutal.

Your Celtics, the defending champions, have been taken to a seventh game by the Chicago Bulls (losing three of the four games that went OT, which is when coaching actually matters in the NBA). And this ain’t your playing days’ Bulls. This is a college team, albeit a damn good one, playing its best basketball of the season.

The Cs, however, are playing their worst basketball in two years. And Doc isn’t even coaching anymore. Or maybe he just stopped coaching over the final two minutes Thursday, when it really counted.

Because until two minutes left in the third overtime, the Celtics did what they should have done – got the ball to Ray Allen, who knocked down another unbelievable catch-and-shoot jumper that I’m not even sure he looked at the rim on. SWISH!

At that point, it was 123-123, and Allen was up to 51 points on 18-of-32 shooting, hitting 9 of 18 from 3-point range – including three straight prayers that would’ve given Jordan, Bird and Magic H-O-Rs in a shooting competition.

So you’d think the Celtics would keep feeding that hot hand down the stretch, ehh? Nope.

Dude didn’t get a single – NOT ONE – touch over the final six possessions — making this the second-straight game Ray-Ray was helpless in the waning minutes.

• 1:57 Ray Allen makes 21-foot jumper (Rajon Rondo assists)
• 1:15 Glen Davis traveling
• 0:38 Paul Pierce bad pass (Joakim Noah steals, then the former Gator dunks on Pierce’s face!)
• 0:28 Eddie House makes 21-foot jumper (Rajon Rondo assists)
• 0:23 Rajon Rondo misses layup, makes putback
• 0:07 Derrick Rose blocks Rajon Rondo’s 12-foot jumper
• 0:00 Rajon Rondo misses 42-foot three point jumper

Congratulations Doc!

Hmmm. And da Bulls did everything they could to give that game away – Derrick Rose missing two free throws with 3 seconds left, Kirk Hinrich butchering a point-blank layup with 21 ticks left.

But the Celtics failed to finish off the Bulls because they failed to find the man with the hottest hand in the land.

What’s up with that Doc? How does a guy who dropped almost 5,000 dimes in his career, fail to draw up a play for his star shooter down the stretch? Without Paul Pierce (who fouled out late) or KG in the mix? B-R-U-T-A-L.

After the game, Doc summed it up by saying, “We just stopped playing.”

No Doc, you stopped coaching.

Note: Runner up for the DOC award this season? Last year’s COY, and another former NBA guard who I have had a ton of respect for, Byron Scott. New Orleans was the talk of the league last year, this year they became the biggest joke in NBA playoff history with that 58-point drumming the other night. Although, his players did stop playing down the stretch. But who’s fault is that? It starts at the top in my eyes.