Philadelphia 76ers: Doc Rivers’ tenure just hit a crossroads

In the NBA, losing three games is nothing. The Philadelphia 76ers lost 23 games during the 2020-21 NBA season and still finished with the best mark in the Eastern Conference, and the winningest team in NBA history, the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, lost nine games on their way to their second of five straight trips to the Finals.

With the season winding down and the East a harder out than at any point in the Sixers’ contention window, losing three games, even in a row, can have a serious effect on the standings but shouldn’t realistically be too big a cause for concern in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of teams have gone through rough patches on their way to the playoffs; as long as the three losses in a row don’t come after going up 3-1 in the NBA Finals, teams get to live to fight another day.

When losing three games in a row becomes concerning, however, is when the team on the wrong side of three consecutive losing efforts isn’t doing so due to a lack of talent or even effort but because of coaching; pre-game strategies, in-adjustments, rotations – all of it.

If Doc Rivers wasn’t the best coach in the association at in-game adjustments, that would be one thing. When the Sixers take on premier opponents, it’s not hard to notice which team routinely takes the court with a better game plan and which coach makes better adjustments while the game is going on. But the biggest benefit of having Rivers in the building was his experience. He helped to keep the team together during the Ben Simmons situation, which would have tanked more than a few lesser head coaches, and provided a different approach than Brett Brown, whose words started to lose their meaning following the NBA Bubble.

But now, as rumors swirl that the team has started to turn on their head coach, losing a third-straight game – even a trap game to the Detroit Pistons – could either be the start of an internal mutiny that sees a Mike D’Antoni-type take over coaching this fall or a galvanizing event that re-unifies the team and pushes them forwards as a cohesive unit. Whether good, bad, or somewhere in-between, it’s clear the Philadelphia 76ers will never be the same.

Doc Rivers has a little over a month to right the Philadelphia 76ers.

Alright, so just for fun, what could Doc Rivers do to right the Philadelphia 76ers’ proverbial ship and have a chance at saving a season rapidly getting away from his team?

Well, for starters, Rivers could take accountability for his part in the team’s recent struggles and commit to doing the best he can to get the team back to their winning ways. I know that doesn’t seem like a big deal or anything, but there is a pretty well documented track record of Rivers throwing others under the bus when a loss could easily fall on everyone’s shoulders – including James Harden after the Pistons game – and in a sport like basketball, where the interpersonal aspect as just as vital as the Xs and Os, that sort of humility would surely play well in the locker room.

Then, Rivers could commit to a true competition down the stretch, where young players are given just as much of a chance to earn playoff minutes coming off the bench as their 30-plus-year-old veteran teammates. Would Paul Reed necessarily beat out Paul Millsap as the Sixers’ reserve small-ball center? Or what about Charles Bassey? Could he outperform DeAndre Jordan as a traditional big? Could Furkan Korkmaz or even Isaiah Joe outperform Danny Green as a 3-and-D wing? No, not necessarily, but giving the bench a chance to test their mettle against one another would surely be appreciated by the players and maybe even inject some much-needed new blood in a borderline zombie rotation.

And hey, do you know what? Why not check the advanced analytics and allow something other than the eye test to dictate which players play with each other on the second units? James Harden has a proven track record of putting in good minutes alongside Matisse Thybulle, Tyrese Maxey, and Korkmaz but has produced negative Net Rating minutes alongside Georges Niang, Isaiah Joe, and especially DeAndre Jordan; why not take that into account when formulating the rotation?

Will any of that happen? I mean, probably not, but hey, if it’s all or nothing, maybe Rivers will finally try something different.

The Philadelphia 76ers have gone almost all-in on the 2021-22 NBA season. They traded away their three-time All-Star point guard for a three-time scoring champ, surrendered the vast majority of their tradeable assets, and committed to the framework of a roster with only so many moveable parts moving forward. While Daryl Morey will still be able to re-shape the roster a good bit this offseason, trading away ill-fitting performers for more schematically complementary players, there’s only so much time left for Doc Rivers to prove he’s the man worth running the show into the future, especially if Joel Embiid and James Harden aren’t sold on his services. If this next month plus doesn’t turn around in a way antithetical to Rivers’ modus operandi, it could be his curtain call in the City of Brotherly Love.