The Clippers are NBA title contenders, thanks in no small part to Doc Rivers | Keith Pompey

Doc Rivers described his first game against the Los Angeles Clippers as “weird.”

One can only imagine the 76ers coach will feel the same Friday night when facing his former team for the first time in Philadelphia.

He’ll walk onto the Wells Fargo Center court during pregame, glance on the court and see several of his former star players in the Clippers’ layup line. Rivers will see several of the staff members he hired during his seven-year tenure in Los Angeles. And he’ll see Tyronn Lue, his close friend, mentee, former player and now his replacement as the Clippers’ head coach.

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Rivers’ influence is all over the hottest team in the NBA.

The Clippers, winners of seven straight, are 39-18, third in the Western Conference and three games behind Utah, the top team in the West and the NBA.

“They don’t have a lot of the same guys. They run a lot of the same stuff I run,” said Rivers, whose Eastern Conference-leading Sixers lost to the Clippers, 122-112, on March 27 at the Staples Center.

While going through the Sixers’ shootaround for that game, Rivers at times thought he was going through a Clippers’ shootaround.

“But I wouldn’t have changed much offensively, either,” he said. “They were pretty darn good last year. The difference is they’ve had a chance to practice together. You can see that. I think they’ve given the ball to [Paul George] more, which I think has helped them, you know, [with] him bringing the ball up.

“So they made some good changes.”

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Rivers said defense is the biggest change he’s seen in the Clippers. He thinks this year’s Clippers team is better on that end of the floor. Despite some statistics that say otherwise, Rivers thinks they’re going to be one of the postseason’s better defensive teams.

And he’s proud of the job that Lue is doing.

Rivers was fired by Los Angeles in September, and replaced by Lue a month later. But their relationship hasn’t changed.

Rivers was so proud of Lue when, as a first-year head coach in Cleveland, he won the 2016 NBA title. After Lue was fired by the Cavs in October 2018, Rivers hired him for an informal role with the Clippers, where he previously was an associate head coach. Then before the 2019-20 season, Lue was named Rivers’ lead assistant coach.

All the while, Rivers was an advocate for Lue to get another head-coaching job. Lue was even a finalist for the Sixers’ job before Rivers became available.

“My position with Ty hasn’t changed,” Rivers said. “He’s always used me as a sounding board. That hasn’t changed at all, and that will never change.

“I knew Ty was going to be a hell of coach. I don’t know why I knew that. I just knew it.”

Over his 22-year coaching career, Rivers says he has told only three or four players to call him for a job when their playing careers concluded. Lue took him up on the offer.

At that time, Rivers was coaching the Boston Celtics and the season already had started. So there wasn’t a position available. But Rivers and Boston general manager Danny Ainge created a position for Lue.

These days, Lue is building on what Rivers established with the Clippers.

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Rivers has compiled a 981-698 regular-season record, in stops with the Orlando Magic, Boston Celtics, Clippers, and the Sixers. He’s in 10th place on the NBA all-time wins list. He was the NBA coach of the year in 2000 with the Magic. Eight years later, he led the Celtics to the NBA title.

With the Clippers, he had a 356-208 mark, the top winning percentage (.631) in franchise history.

Los Angeles, coming off a 56-26 season and a first-round playoff elimination under Vinny Del Negro, acquired Rivers in June 2013 in a trade with the Celtics for a 2015 first-round draft pick. He was named coach of the Clippers and senior vice president of basketball operations. Rivers led the Clippers to a franchise-record 57 wins and the third seed in the Western Conference during his first season.

He was let go after the Clippers failed to live up to lofty expectations. They were favored to reach last season’s Western Conference finals after the offseason acquisitions of Kawhi Leonard and George. The Clippers lost to the Denver Nuggets in the second round after holding a 3-1 lead in the best-of-the-seven series.

Rivers had successful regular seasons with the Clippers, but they never got past the conference semifinals and were 3-8 in potential series-clinching games; they twice blew 3-1 series leads. Aside from that, Rivers changed the organization’s culture and sustained competitiveness.

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“You remember when I took the job, I said I had several goals,” Rivers of the Clippers. “One is when you hear the Clippers name, you look at it as a classy organization that wins, and a championship organization. Well, I think we did that as far as everything except for the championship part. You got to win that to become that obviously.

“But last year, we thought we had a shot. This year, they have a shot. And I feel like I played a part in that.”