Boston coach Doc Rivers shouts out instructions to his team last night.

AP / Kevork Djansezian

Maybe it’s time to give Doc Rivers a little love.

The same Doc Rivers who a year ago had people saying he was everything from a lousy coach to a moron to everything else a losing coach is called.

And there’s no question he was a losing coach last year, a paltry 24 wins, a season that never seemed to get started and then only got worse.

Well guess what?

He’s the same coach today, same guy.

The only difference is that he’s got better players.

Simple, right?

You have good players, you win a lot of games. You have bad players, you lose a lot of games.

Then why do we so often tend to overlook this, especially in the NBA, where coaches have little to no control over which players end up on their rosters?

This is not college, where a coach is in charge of the so-called program, where the buck really does stop and start with the coach. It’s the college coach who is in charge of recruiting players, coaching them, dealing with the boosters and alumni, all of it, the overwhelming face of the program.

This is the NBA, where the coach plays with the players the general manager gives him.

So a Phil Jackson wins nine NBA titles, six with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, three with Shaq and Kobe, and is deservedly recognized as one of the NBA’s all-time greatest coaches. No matter that last year he seemed rather ordinary when his Lakers went out in the first round on little cats’ feet, when his team essentially was Kobe against the world.

Same with Pat Riley, another of the all-time great NBA coaches, whose Heat were so bad this year that Riley stopped coaching down the stretch to concentrate on college scouting.

And why were the Heat so bad?

Simple.

They didn’t have enough good players.

Do you see a theme here?

Which brings us back to Rivers, who won 66 games during the regular season and now has the Celtics in the finals for the first time in 21 years, yet still doesn’t seem to get a lot of respect. As if the Celtics were going to win 66 games this year no matter who the coach was.

The word last year, with the Celtics seemingly forever stuck on some treadmill to nowhere, was that he wasn’t good with young players, wasn’t a particularly good defensive coach. There were also rumors that he was going to be the scapegoat if the Celtics didn’t turn things around.

What a difference a year makes.

There’s no question that the hiring of Tom Thibodeau to oversee the defense has been instrumental, the genesis of them becoming a very good defensive team. Then there’s the addition of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, the transformation of a team.

Better players.

But there’s no discounting Rivers’ role in all this either. It is one thing to have great players. It’s another to get them to buy into what you’re trying to do. There’s no question the Celtics have bought into what Rivers has been trying to do. His season has been a testimony to that.

After the Detroit series, he talked about how this new Big Three wasn’t going to work unless they all bought into it, all realized they were going to have to sacrifice some of their individualism, all realized that they had to set the tone. That they have done so is a credit not only to themselves, but to Rivers, too.

He always has gotten along with players. That’s always been his strength. That, and the fact that he was a player himself, and has always understood that it’s a players’ league.

There’s no discounting this, either. Being an NBA coach is all about handling egos, all about managing people, all about trying to utilize your roster, get the most out of it. That’s infinitely more important when you call your timeouts.

And most of all, the most important thing for an NBA coach’s reputation?

How many game he wins.

And Doc Rivers has won a lot.

So where’s the love?

breynold@projo.com