Doc to get Star treatment

Celtics coach one victory shy of trip to New Orleans

NBA. Doc Rivers has always enjoyed being at home during the weekend of the NBA All-Star Game. This year, he’ll have to work.

If the Celtics beat the Knicks today — or win any of their next six games — Rivers will serve as the head coach of the Eastern Conference in next month’s All-Star Game by virtue of Boston having the best record in the season’s first half.

Coaches are not officially selected until Feb. 3, but the Celtics (32-6) will clinch the best winning percentage in the East with one more victory.

“It would be great for Doc to get the recognition for the great job he has been doing,” said Celtics captain Paul Pierce, who has played for Rivers for four years. “He’s been a great coach since he entered the league. He’s finally got an opportunity where he can coach some veterans, and he’s showing what he can do. I think he is one of the more underrated coaches in the league. It would be a great honor if he got a chance to coach the All-Star team.”

Rivers, whose lone All-Star appearance came as a player in 1988, has done a tremendous job of blending a team that was completely rebuilt last summer, keeping his three stars happy and getting everyone to focus on the season-long process.

As a result, the C’s easily have the best record in the NBA, and Rivers will likely be the first Celtic to coach in the All-Star Game since Chris Ford in 1991. It’s an accomplishment his players believe would be well-deserved.

“He cares about the guys genuinely, and he wants everyone to get better and get smarter as an individual,” Ray Allen said. “It would be nothing for him to tell us about something that his dad told him growing up and how it made him who he was. Nothing for him to quote a scripture from a poet or the Bible or any great book or good author he read from.

“It’s interesting because it’s tough for a coach in this league to play 82 games, and you say the same things all the time. You have to find different ways to say the same thing, and I think he does a great job of doing that. He finds different aspects of sources to pull from.”