LOS ANGELES — Once upon a time, Doc Rivers was the guy being questioned. He was Coach of the Year in his first NBA season in the lead chair, getting the 1999-00 Magic to 41-41.

It was said that he could coach young and hungry players to overachieve, though he got fired a few years later after a 1-10 start.

Then he got hired by the Celtics, and there were clashes with Paul Pierce, leading some to question whether Rivers could coach an established star. Even when the Celts acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen and got good, he still had issues with Rajon Rondo.

When he got to the Clippers, he couldn’t keep the Chris Paul-Blake Griffin-DeAndre Jordan troika together and happy, and Lob City devolved into an urban renewal project that Rivers had tried to avoid when he left Boston in the wake of the Pierce-Garnett trade that signaled the start of a major Celtic rebuilding.

Now with a 2008 NBA championship ring in his possession, Doc looks from afar and sees Brad Stevens being put under similar scrutiny.

Brad can coach up the kids. He can turn underrated players like Jae Crowder into starters. He can take secondary recruits and run them deep into the NCAA tournament, as he did at Butler.

But Brad has trouble dealing with a team of blue chip professionals.

Standing on the court in the Clippers’ sparkling practice facility, Rivers shook his head.

“None of that’s true,” he said.

“Coaches coach. That’s what you do. Every job may look different, but it’s all mostly the same. You have problems with every team. It’s all just talk. It really is. Brad is an excellent coach, and he was an excellent coach last year. He was an excellent coach three years ago, and he’s an excellent coach now, and none of that changes.

“All of us as coaches, we’ve coached young players, old players, happy and unhappy, and that’s all part of it. But I love what Brad is doing. He’s just doing his job, and that’s what he has to do.”

Speaking to the specifics of what Stevens has had to deal with after returning Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward to a team that had made it to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals — albeit in a conference weaker than it is now — Rivers acknowledged that some things are beyond his ability to comment.

“I don’t know because I don’t have that team,” he said, though he did note recently how hard it can be to coach young players who want to succeed on their own terms rather than adapt to a prescribed, and often lesser, role.

“But we all have issues, and issues are fine,” Rivers said. “We accept that. I want to find a team that has won anything that had no issues. I want to find that team.”

The Clippers have had their issues, but they appear to be headed in a good direction after some dealing at the NBA deadline, moving Avery Bradley to Memphis and Tobias Harris to Philadelphia. Rivers’ troops take a four-game winning streak into Monday’s matchup with the Celtics, cementing their place in the Western Conference playoff seeding in the process.

He’s also taken note of the Celts’ recent rise, though he didn’t seem to doubt his old team — even after the Clippers came back to beat the C’s after being down by 28 a month ago in Boston. The off-court Celtic drama didn’t deter him from his opinion.

“It’s all humorous to me,” Rivers said. “I just think they’re going to be great. They’re going to be fine when the playoffs start.

“I think when you go to the Finals or the Eastern Conference finals, it takes a while. Sometimes you can go get your team. Sometimes you have to wait on your team. And sometimes your team just comes around. I think that’s them. They’ve had their issues, like every team in the NBA has issues at times — at times. Just because you have issues at times doesn’t mean you have issues, by the way.

“They’re going to be fine. They are as good as anybody in the East and as talented as anybody in the NBA. And when the playoffs start, I think everybody will see that.” Related Articles Game 4 looms at the end of four-day break

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Rivers is happy to see something else about the Celtics. Though he wasn’t aware until told by a reporter, the C’s have reacquired R.J. Hunter, signing him to a two-way contract.

That’s significant, because Hunter was taken in the first round of the 2015 draft, No. 28 overall, with the pick the Celts got from the Clippers for allowing Rivers to get out of his contract.

Doc smiled broadly.

“That means my pick’s still alive,” he said.

So are the Clippers and Celtics — and the notion that Brad Stevens may just be able to coach established veterans after all.