Give 'em hell, Doc. I'll be cheering for Rivers and Milwaukee Bucks in NBA playoffs.

Contrary to what he might tell you, I did not actually try to kill Doc Rivers.

It is true that back in the day, at the start of his sophomore season at Marquette University in 1981, which was my first year covering the team for The Milwaukee Journal, I was supposed to take him out to dinner after practice at the old gym on 16th and Clybourn streets in order to interview him for a major feature in Sunday's paper.

As I inched my Toyota out of the driveway between two parked cars, I was hit by a car coming up the hill with no lights on. I immediately turned to Rivers, still called Glenn at the time, and said, "Don't tell Hank (Raymonds)!" But it was the smallest of fender benders and barely delayed our dinner/interview.

Many, many years later, he was coaching the Boston Celtics and I was covering the Cleveland Cavaliers. Rivers was holding a press briefing outside his locker room, and my Cleveland colleagues and I passed by en route to the Cavs locker room.

Rivers interrupted his press briefing and yelled, "Ask her how she nearly killed me."

A slight exaggeration, though it definitely caught the attention of the Boston and Cleveland reporters.

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Doc Rivers has an authentic love for Milwaukee and Marquette

Since Rivers was named coach of the Milwaukee Bucks in January, I've been remembering so many of our little interactions over the past four decades.

During team masses on the road, I remember how he'd come into Father Tom Schloemer's room, ignore the chairs set up and just flop on the bed. I remember riding in a van to practice with coaches, players and Sports Information Director Betsy Bjalobok (later, Van Sickle) and she was singing along to the radio when Glenn yelled from the back of the van, "Betsy, I didn't know you couldn't sing." I remember how he cried after missing three free throws down the stretch of a first-round NCAA loss against Tennessee in 1983, which would be his and Raymonds' last games at Marquette.

Sometimes, I'd proudly watch from afar like when Doc Rivers came back to get his degree from Marquette in 1985; when he won the NBA's citizenship award in 1990; when Marquette retired his number 31 in 2004; when he was named to the Board of Trustees; and when he won Alumnus of the Year in 2012.

I saw him win the NBA championship with the Celtics in 2008, employing the African group philosophy of "ubuntu," which translates into "I am because we are."

Two years later, I read about how he collected $100 from each of the Boston team members and hid it in the ceiling of the locker room in the Staples Center in Los Angeles after a regular season game. He told everyone they'd get their money back on their next trip to the Staples Center, which would only happen if they made the NBA Finals. They did.

All these memories came flooding back during his introductory news conference with the Bucks.

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As I stood in the back of the interview room, I thought about how little he had changed since 1981. OK, his raspy voice does make me want to give him a cough drop every time I see him. But if there's one word I would use to describe him, it's authentic.

His love for Marquette and Milwaukee is real.

Marquette basketball shaped the player, university shaped the man

"Personally, for me, being back here is a dream," Rivers said in that first Bucks news conference. "I think about Rick and Al and Hank. This is where I learned, really, most of my basketball knowledge. It came from three geniuses. They taught me basketball. They taught me life. ... l'm not here if I don't go to Marquette. Bottom line. I really believe that. Not only just Rick, Hank and Al. But the professors. I wasn't the greatest student when I came to Marquette. But I left a hell of a student. ... I wanted to skate and it was not allowed. ... So, coming back here to a place that changed me as a literal person is a dream."

So from one Marquette alum to another, I'm reintroducing a (slightly modified) phrase popular when I was in school, and I invite Bucks fans to use it at will: Give 'em hell, Doc.

Mary Schmitt Boyer covered Al McGuire's Marquette University team as the sports editor of the Marquette Tribune in 1975-76. Then she covered the team from 1981-86 for The Milwaukee Journal. She covered the NBA for 25 years, mostly for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She was the first woman president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association and the Association for Women in Sports Media. This column first appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.