The Clippers are too close to turn back now, at least in Doc Rivers’ eyes.
After a hard-luck first-round series loss to the Trail Blazers, the Clippers coach said he doesn’t see a scenario in which he would try to break up the core of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan this offseason, with injuries to the former two the contributing factor to the disappointing finish.
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"We're close, and we know that," Rivers said Monday, via ESPN.com. "We have a priority of trying to just keep making our team better. Obviously because of the injuries — Blake's in particular — we literally don't know what we could have done. Even during the playoffs, he still wasn't 100 percent."
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Griffin missed most of the regular season with quad injuries as well as a fractured right hand, but the team still managed to win more than 50 games for the fourth season in a row.
Things fell apart, though, when Chris Paul fractured a bone in his shooting hand in Game 4. In the same game, Griffin reinjured his quad, and both missed the rest of the series as the Trail Blazers won the final two games to advance to the second round.
"I would love to have seen us 100 percent healthy going into the season," Rivers said. "And if we hadn't have won it then (under those circumstances), you would have known exactly what you need to do. So now it's more guesswork. But I think we have a pretty good idea of what to do."