SAN ANTONIO — Doc Rivers had two large problems. Seconds into the fourth quarter at AT&T Center on Thursday night, Glen Davis of the Los Angeles Clippers sprained his left ankle and hopped several times on one leg in apparent agony before tumbling like an industrial-size sack of potatoes.
Rivers, the Clippers’ coach, knew that his long-term problem would have to wait — the fact that one of his more reliable reserves on an alarmingly short bench was now injured. There was nothing Rivers could do about that. The short-term problem was of greater concern. Rivers needed someone (or several someones, more likely) to remove Davis’s 290-pound body from its position on the baseline before the officials forced the Clippers to use one of their timeouts.