Doc Rivers Says His Daughter Tried To Stop Him From Trading Seth Curry To The Nets

In February of 2022, the Philadelphia 76ers made the blockbuster trade of the season by sending Ben Simmons to Brooklyn for sharpshooting guard James Harden. At the time, it was a move widely hailed by the fans and the NBA media, but not everyone was a fan of the move at first.

Callie Rivers, 33, is the daughter of Doc and the wife of sharpshooting point guard Seth Curry. Since Seth was on the Sixers that season, Callie was living in Philadelphia full-time, in close proximity to her father.

According to Doc, Callie practically begged him not to trade Seth from the team. During a guest spot on “Back On the Record with Bob Costas," Rivers spoke more about that weird situation and detailed how he had to deal with moving his own daughter during the trade.

“Trading Seth, I had to deal with my daughter … who had two young babies. That’s a completely different thing,” Rivers explained. “The night before, because there was a rumor it was going to happen, I get a call from my daughter. ‘Listen! Are you gonna do it or not?’ And I said, ‘You know, Callie, I can’t…’ [She says], ‘I’m your daughter!’ I said, ‘Well, Callie, I don’t know. I can’t…’ ‘I’m your daughter!’ That was a tough one. Well, she ended up in Brooklyn and she is the happiest ever. And for me, I can still get in my car and in 90 minutes, I can be in Brooklyn, so it turned out okay.”

Clearly, Doc must care about winning if he's willing to move his own family out of town. Of course, let's not forget that this isn't the first time he has traded away members of his own family.

Doc Rivers Traded His Own Son For Marcin Gortat In 2018

There was a brief time when Doc was coaching his son, Austin, on the Clippers before he traded him away. Coach Rovers also spoke about that situation.

"It was hard. [With] Austin, Dave Wohl and a couple other guys thought it would be a good idea; I did not like it. I just thought, 'It's just too hard,'” Rivers said. “This is what you want: if you want to coach your son in the NBA, he’s gotta be the best player by a long shot or the worst player by a long shot. Being in the middle makes it hard, because the guy behind him thinks he should play in front of him, and the guy in front of him who he's pushing thinks there's favoritism. So you really gotta walk a fine line.

"It was difficult in a lot of areas. Austin and I were really close and he would come over, but [when I coached him], he didn't want to come over because, you know… It’s a lot of little things like that. But at the very end of it, it was awesome.” 

One can only imagine what it must have been like for Rivers to trade away his son and son-in-law like that, but he knows how to separate his personal life from business.

And when it comes to his job as a coach in the NBA, there isn't anything he takes more seriously, and he'll do whatever he thinks will help his team win.