Firing Doc Rivers Won’t Fix All That Ails The Sixers

After their third straight second-round playoff exit under his watch, the Philadelphia 76ers parted ways with head coach Doc Rivers on Tuesday, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. The Sixers likely sealed Rivers’ fate by no-showing in the second half of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Boston Celtics on Sunday.

Rivers is the latest big-name coach to lose his job after a disappointing playoff exit. The Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns parted ways with Mike Budenholzer and Monty Williams in recent weeks, respectively, following similar postseason flameouts. The Sixers now have Budenholzer and Williams on their radar as Rivers’ replacement, according to Wojnarowski, along with assistant coach Sam Cassell and former head coaches Nick Nurse, Frank Vogel and Mike D’Antoni.

Although Rivers was by no means perfect during his three-year tenure with the Sixers, coaching wasn’t the only reason for their postseason collapse. Regardless of whom they hire in place of Rivers, they have even more pivotal issues to address this offseason, beginning with the long-term future of James Harden.

Harden can become an unrestricted free agent this offseason by declining his $35.6 million player option for the 2023-24 season. The Sixers’ decision to part ways with Rivers might have been influenced by a desire to incentivize Harden to return, as the star guard tersely described his relationship with Rivers as “OK” while speaking with reporters after the Game 7 loss.

“Behind the scenes, from what I’m told, one person said to me it would be hard for me to see James wanting to come back and play for Doc again,” ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne said on Monday’s NBA Today.

When the Celtics shut off the Sixers’ bread-and-butter play—the pick-and-roll set between Harden and Joel Embiid—the Sixers couldn’t consistently counter. Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla made the series-swinging adjustment by inserting Robert Williams III in his starting lineup ahead of Game 6 alongside Al Horford, and the Sixers never quite figured out how to punish the double-big look in time.

Harden had two of the best playoff games in his career against the Celtics. He helped pull off a Game 1 upset without Embiid by tying his playoff career high with 45 points on 17-of-30 shooting, and he had a 42-point, nine-assist, eight-rebound masterclass in Game 4 that included the game-winning three-pointer in overtime. However, Harden crashed and burned in Games 6 and 7, finishing with a combined 22 points on 7-of-27 shooting, 16 assists, 13 rebounds and 10 turnovers.

The Celtics were the better, deeper team in that series, but the Sixers had a legitimate shot to beat them and advance to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in more than two decades. Their Game 5 road victory was arguably their best win in 10-plus years, and they held a two-point lead halfway through the fourth quarter Game 6 at home. Their offense went cold at the wrong time, though, and the Celtics capitalized when the Sixers couldn’t slam the door shut on them.

The Sixers’ effective field-goal percentage in Game 6 was 40.9%, which was 15.7% below what it was expected to be based on their shot quality, according to Second Spectrum data (h/t Michael Pina of The Ringer). They were minus-23.3% in the fourth quarter of that game, according to Pina, which was their sixth-worst quarter of the season in terms of expected effective field-goal percentage versus actual eFG%.

Firing Rivers could be viewed as an overreaction to a small sample size of uncharacteristic misses, particularly given the success he’s had with the Sixers. They made three straight second-round appearances with Rivers and had three straight seasons north of a .600 winning percentage, although they failed to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals each time.

While untimely injuries to Embiid played a role in each of those series losses, Rivers isn’t completely blameless. He now has a career record of 17-33 in closeout games of playoff series, and he has the most blown series leads of any coach in NBA history.

Rivers has gotten defensive about the latter—”I wish y’all would tell the whole story with me,” he told reporters during last year’s playoffs after the Toronto Raptors started to battle back from a 3-0 series deficit against his Sixers. However, he also hasn’t guided a team to a conference finals appearance in more than a decade despite coaching Embiid, Chris Paul and Blake Griffin during their respective primes over that span.

Rivers has earned the reputation over the years as a player-friendly coach who doesn’t experiment or make enough proper adjustments to survive multiple playoff series. He stubbornly stuck with over-the-hill backup big men such as Paul Millsap and DeAndre Jordan after the trade deadline last year rather than giving minutes to younger, higher-upside players like Paul Reed or Charles Bassey until the final week of the regular season.

Rivers was better in that regard this year. He had the Sixers play more zone defense than they have in years past as a change-up option to throw off opposing offenses, and he tinkered with his starting lineup throughout the year, giving De’Anthony Melton a chance to run with the starters ahead of Tyrese Maxey for two months. That allowed Maxey to get more reps as a primary ball-handler with the second unit, although Maxey admitted to struggling with that transition at times.

Still, Rivers had his fair share of own-goals this season as well. He played Montrezl Harrell ahead of Reed up until after the trade deadline, even though Harrell might as well be the textbook definition of an 82-game player who gets exposed in the playoffs because of his defensive shortcomings. Had Reed gotten those reps throughout the regular season as Embiid’s primary backup, perhaps he would have been even better equipped to buy Embiid a few more minutes of rest throughout the Celtics series.

P.J. Tucker was an offensive afterthought under Rivers, too. Tucker averaged 7.6 points on 6.0 field-goal attempts last season with the Miami Heat, but he had chipped in only 3.5 points on 3.0 field-goal attempts throughout the regular season with the Sixers this year. More than 60 percent of his shot attempts came from behind the three-point arc, which the Celtics used to their advantage as the series progressed.

Knowing that Tucker was a relative non-factor inside the three-point arc, the Celtics put Williams on him defensively and allowed Williams to roam inside as a help defender. They were fine with leaving Tucker open in the corner if it meant sending an additional defender to wall off Harden’s drives to the basket or at Embiid on post-ups. Tucker made them pay with 11 first-quarter points in Game 7, but he didn’t score another point for the rest of the game.

Almost without fail, Rivers tended to blame Sixers losses this season on a lack of ball movement and/or a lack of trust. Harden disagreed with that assessment after Game 6, telling reporters, “There was some trust. We just didn’t make shots.”

The Sixers did average 260 passes and 373.3 overall touches in their three wins against Boston compared to only 235 passes and 345.3 touches in their four losses. However, both their average seconds per touch (3.87) and average dribbles per touch (2.91) were higher in the three wins than they were in the four losses (3.64 and 2.82, respectively). They also averaged fewer frontcourt touches (161.0) and paint touches (10.0) in their losses against Boston than they did in their wins (171.3 and 11.7, respectively).

Embiid notably did not touch the ball in the final few minutes of the Sixers’ Game 6 collapse as their offense went stagnant and they scored only 13 fourth-quarter points, three fewer than Celtics wing Jayson Tatum had on his own. It’s unclear who deserves the lion’s share of the blame for that—Embiid, Harden, Rivers or all three—but it was unacceptable for the Sixers not to have a more viable Plan B after structuring their offense around the Harden-Embiid pick-and-roll all year.

If Harden winds up leaving the Sixers in free agency this summer, whomever they hire in place of Rivers may be inheriting a fatally flawed roster. Harden led the league with 10.7 assists per game this past season, and the Sixers won’t have an easy way to replace that caliber of playmaking if he walks, barring a miracle sign-and-trade. Maxey would likely step into the full-time ball-handling role, while Embiid could become even more of a playmaker at the elbow, too.

Even if Harden comes back, the Sixers might not have many clear avenues to improve their roster. They’d largely have to bank on a new coach getting more out of this core than Rivers did, which is certainly within the realm of possibility. If the Sixers routinely abandoned Rivers’ offense because of a lack of trust, as he claimed, it stands to reason that they might need a new voice and/or a new system to buy into.

Regardless of what happens with Harden this summer, a new coach isn’t guaranteed to push the Sixers further than Rivers did. It’s worth seeing whether one can before considering more seismic changes, though.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac or RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.