Nearly a month after being fired by the Sixers, Doc Rivers offered opinions on his former team, including James Harden's performance in the playoffs, Joel Embiid and the team's overall culture. NoahLevick of NBCSPhilly has the story:
“No. 1, he has to be healthy in the playoffs,” Rivers said. “And this was the healthiest , but he still wasn’t 100 percent. Then No. 2 for Jo is he’s got to make all his players better in the playoffs. … And he has the ability. Now, I stayed on him daily. He has the ability to make his teammates better and when he does that … if you look at our games this year when he did that and dominated, hard to go away from Joel Embiid. It really is.
“And so I thought that Jo, in the three years, you could see the growth there. We forget how young he is. We also forget his first two years, he didn’t play. And I’m telling you, that sets a tone. When you miss two years and you’re sitting there all the time and you get used to not playing in games, that sets a tone. Ben Simmons went through the same thing; he missed first year.
“So fighting that early on, when I first got there, was huge: ‘Jo, you need to play tonight. Jo, you can play tonight.’ Now he’s up in games , so he’s crossed that barrier. The next one is making his teammates better. When he does that, it’s going to be hard to stop. And I think he will do it. I just think we forget his age and we forget how he started in this league.” In contrast, Harden described his relationship with Rivers simply as “OK” that night.
“It was challenging,” Rivers said of his experience coaching Harden. “James is so good at playing one way, and the way that I believe you have to play to win is, in some ways, different — because it’s a lot of giving up the ball, moving the ball, coming back to the ball. I would’ve loved to have him younger, when that was easier for him, because giving up the ball and getting the ball back is hard. It’s physical, it’s exhausting.
“So yeah, at times to get him to move it and play the way I needed him to play … I thought the first half of the year, we were the best team in the game. I thought James was playing perfect basketball. He was the point guard of the team and he was scoring, but he was doing more playmaking. … And then the second half, he started trying to score more, and I thought we got stagnant at times. I thought we changed.
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