Former Clippers assistant Alvin Gentry reunites with Steve Kerr

The Clippers didn’t just lose Alvin Gentry. They lost him to perhaps their most bitter rival.

The Golden State Warriors made Gentry their associate head coach this summer and paid him $800,000 per year to join Coach Steve Kerr’s staff. The two have known each other since Gentry was briefly an assistant coach with San Antonio in the summer of 2000 while Kerr was a shooting guard for the Spurs.

The Clippers hired Gentry to be their head coach in August of that year.

“I told him it was a wonderful run, that 30 days in the summer,” Kerr recently joked.

Gentry, who turned 60 on Wednesday, also coached the Phoenix Suns for two seasons while Kerr was the franchise’s general manager. Gentry continued to coach the Suns for three seasons after Kerr departed in the summer of 2010.

Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said he knew he would lose Gentry to the Warriors once Kerr began interviewing assistant coaching candidates.

“I never fight that,” Rivers said. “I just think it’s good for assistants to do better and they clearly paid him a lot of money and hopefully Alvin will buy dinner once in a while. That would be a first.”

Kerr assigned Gentry to scout the Clippers because of his familiarity with his former team. Kerr said the Warriors would run some of the same plays as the Clippers because of Gentry, who helped the Clippers devise an offense that last season averaged a league-leading 107.9 points per game.

“He’s one of the better offensive minds in the league,” Rivers said of Gentry, who compiled a 335-370 record in 12 seasons as head coach of the Clippers, Suns, Detroit Pistons and Miami Heat.

Fouled up?

Clippers center DeAndre Jordan may have just been given reason to start watching Development League games.

The NBA’s minor league is experimenting with a rule that could prevent teams from intentionally fouling notoriously poor free-throw shooters.

If a player is fouled intentionally away from the ball, any player on his team will shoot a free throw and his team will retain possession. The NBA has a similar rule that applies only in the final two minutes of games.

Rivers said he likes that the Development League is testing new rules that could eventually be implemented in the NBA but cautioned that intentional fouls were tricky.

“I think it’s very difficult to judge intent,” Rivers said. “Sometimes it’s clear, but a lot of times it’s not.”

Etc.

Rivers said reserve forward Glen Davis wasn’t ready to return from the strained right groin that has sidelined him since the middle of last month. Davis could make his season debut Saturday against Portland, Rivers said.

ben.bolch@latimes.com

Twitter: @latbbolch