Doc Rivers still working to change culture around Sixers after year 1
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The Philadelphia 76ers brought in Doc Rivers to replace Brett Brown in order to get her team back on track after being swept out of first round of the playoffs in 2020.
In his first year on the job, Rivers guided the Sixers to the No. 1 seed in the East for the first time in 20 years. However, they ended their season in a similar fashion to the Brown era: falling in the second round for the third time in four seasons.
Ben Simmons still has his shortcomings on the offensive end, and Joel Embiid, as great as he was, is still committing turnovers at the worst time in the game. The team still has to fix these bad habits, so that is on Rivers’ to-do list.
But first, the pain of losing Game 7 at home has to drive the team going forward.
“The pain has to drive you but the will to win has to drive even more,” explained Rivers. “The pain is the necessary evil you have to go through sometimes to get to a smooth landing, but the will to win has to drive you more and to do things right.”
The pain of losing at home with a chance to get to the Eastern Conference finals has to drive the entire roster in the offseason. That is when a team will come together and build the culture to become the team they expect they can become.
“Those are some of the things that we have to fix still,” Rivers continued. “The culture of this team and around this team. The teaching of not just the players, but even off the floor staff on driving this entire organization, like everybody has to be in. To me, that’s what we have to keep trying to improve, and the more we improve that around them, the more they’ll do it themselves.”
When it comes down to the specifics of Philadelphia’s culture, Rivers would not go into full detail on what he believes needs to be fixed, but after coming up short again, it’s obvious issues to clean up before the 2021-22 season remain.
“There’s a lot of things, but I’m not gonna get any of those, but those areas, we’re going to improve,” Rivers added. “I will say that we’ve made a huge jump this year in that department, but we have to get better and we will.”
When it comes to the star duo of Simmons and Embiid, the outside world will look at them say “oh, they lost again,” but Rivers is hoping that the lessons of losing Game 7 at home will help them moving forward in terms of their culture and their work ethic.
“I don’t think the average person understands how hard it is to win,” the coach finished. “It’s like ‘You guys didn’t win it again,’ well neither did 29 other teams. And, as a matter of fact, most teams don’t overall. You look at the history, very few cities win. Having said that, I believe we can and I do believe we can.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
