Their union for better or worse

Danny and Doc -- a love story.

That was the unmistakable message that came out of yesterday's news conference to introduce Doc Rivers as the next head coach of the Celtics. All that we don't know is what the over/under is on the two of them picking out the living room furniture.

Danny Ainge said he spent 3 1/2 hours talking to Rivers Monday night about all things basketball. He said when he got up to leave, he realized there was not a single thing over which he and Rivers disagreed. (Does that mean Doc thinks Ricky Davis is a keeper?) Said Ainge, "That's refreshing. I don't even do that with Kevin [McHale]. And you know what? It felt like that. It felt like I was talking to Kevin, one of my best friends, or Bruce Hurst. It felt like that and it was good."

Of all the qualities that Ainge was looking for in his next coach, you had to think that friendship, trust, and similar basketball vision were high on the list. Who knew he and Doc had been buds since they dressed at adjacent lockers at the 1988 All-Star Game in Chicago -- and found out how much they had in common? And after what Ainge had been through this season -- some might suggest that Ainge himself had a hand in all the craziness -- who could blame him for hiring a guy he could work with, feel comfortable with, and who also happened to be an ex-NBA head coach looking for work?

"It's like a previous relationship that is stronger," Ainge explained of his relationship with Rivers. "Maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe it's that we played in the same era and in the same conference. We're very much alike in basketball. I used the example of [Larry] Bird and Rick [Carlisle] and Flip [Saunders] and Kevin. I had a good relationship with Jim O'Brien. To this day, I like Jim O'Brien. But I never felt, from the day I walked in the office, that they [O'Brien and his staff] trusted me. I was the evil athletic director.

"I don't really think I'm a meddlesome guy. I feel like I came into a dysfunctional circumstance with new ownership that wanted somebody to run the basketball operation and didn't like what they saw. Between ownership and coaches and so forth, I just felt like when I got there, the coaches were frustrated by the Vin Baker cloud, by the Antoine [Walker] situation. So I feel that this year has been a year where there's been a lot of dysfunction to get functional. It hasn't been easy."

O'Brien finally got fed up and resigned. (Ainge said he never really considered hiring Rivers at that point. "That just wasn't a consideration at that time," he said. "Maybe it should have been. I guess I should have contacted Doc right away. But I don't think he was ready to jump back in.") It's also common knowledge that Rivers and Orlando general manager John Gabriel were not simpatico when things started going south in Magic land.

Wednesday night, Gabriel was a guest on an Orlando radio station and was asked about Rivers's prospects. His response: "I think he'll take one of the first jobs that comes his way." Yesterday, Gabriel, who hired Rivers, said he had not thought Boston was in the picture.

"I wouldn't initially have put those two together," he said of Ainge and Rivers. "I was a little surprised. Doc is a smart guy. He knows talent. But it could be a challenge for him to be patient with the younger players. We had a problem with that here [in Orlando]."

As for input from Rivers, Gabriel said, "I felt like I was very accommodating. I gave him the players he felt he needed." Left unsaid, he never gave Rivers a player he, Rivers, didn't want. As Gabriel said, "Maybe I was overly accommodating."

But all that is history. Rivers said his relationship with Ainge, and the fact that it was the Boston Celtics job, convinced him to come. (Twenty-something million probably helped.) He said that working with someone he felt and trusted was "extremely important to me. Maybe the most important thing. You share the good times together. You share the bad times together. You don't try to run and hide and point fingers."

Rivers was accused of doing just that in Orlando. Although he rarely played Ben Wallace, once Wallace became a defensive star in Detroit, he blasted the deal that sent him there. (Wallace and Chucky Atkins were sent to Detroit for Grant Hill.) Of his relationship with Gabriel, Rivers said, "Obviously, we didn't hit it off at times." He then said, "I would not be sitting here if it weren't for my relationship with Danny."

So you won't hear any talk of "philosophical differences" between these two. It almost sounded too good to be true, like one could finish the other's sentence. Rivers didn't say a single thing in 210 minutes of talking with Ainge that Ainge disagreed with? Marriages don't start out with such bliss.