Clippers Coach Doc Rivers: ‘I was right a lot’ on referees

Doc Rivers indicated that the referee report the Clippers received the day after Game 5 of their first-round playoff series validated some of his complaints about calls.

The NBA makes its review of calls from the last two minutes of close games public but discloses its review of plays before that only to its teams.

“I’m not going there,” Rivers said Thursday when asked about the league review of plays before the last two minutes, “but I can say I was right a lot, let me just put it that way.”

Rivers was fined $25,000 on Wednesday for his comments critical of the officiating.

Among the calls Rivers questioned were basket interference on Matt Barnes, traveling on Blake Griffin and a foul on J.J. Redick for apparently just standing there. There was also a fourth-quarter technical foul on Chris Paul that gave the Spurs a point when it looked as if Paul did nothing more than throw the ball to a referee after a Spurs basket to quicken the start of a Clippers’ possession.

The league’s public report stated that two of the three calls it missed in the game’s final two minutes — incorrect non-calls on fouls committed by Paul and Barnes — should have gone against the Clippers.

Rivers’ voice was throatier than normal Thursday morning, an indication that he had taken up his players’ cause with officials two days earlier.

“We’ve made the deal, let me do all the [talking] and you do all the playing, and I think they’ve pretty much held to that,” Rivers said. “It’s why my voice is worse of late, because I have had to do that. It’s a good deal, because that way they’ve had their focus.”

Redick said he wasn’t harboring any resentment against the officials going into Game 6.

“Any frustration I ever have with a call or calls that happen during a game, it’s in the moment and then I move on,” Redick said. “I didn’t look at any of the calls or even think about it [Wednesday]. My frustration [Wednesday] was just how much we put into the game and we weren’t able to win.”

Rivers has largely backed officials this season even after games that featured controversial calls.

“We have the hardest game to officiate and we all know that, so I think our guys move on,” Rivers said. “It’s still a human game, no matter what. There’s going to be mistakes from us and them and you just move on.”

Staying put

Rivers wooed San Antonio’s Tim Duncan in the summer of 2000 when Rivers coached the Orlando Magic but was spurned by the free agent, who would go on to win four more NBA titles with the Spurs.

Good call, Rivers said.

“It’s probably the best thing that happened to Tim and me, that he didn’t come, and I really mean that,” Rivers said. “I was so young, I don’t know if I was ready for that anyway. I think time allows you to prepare for things and that was the basketball gods’ way of saying, ‘Wait, earn it, get ready for it.’

“The best thing he did was to stay here.”

ben.bolch@latimes.com

Twitter: @latbbolch