The Official Fire Doc Rivers Thread

[mjkvol]

I won't say that Rivers is a bad coach - he definitely has his attributes, such as player relations (minus Ben, but he's an outlier in many areas) and ability to overachieve with a lesser roster. I've always felt he was best suited to rebuilding teams or teams on the cusp of success, as he showed in Orlando and early on in LA.

But to me the place where the good and great coaches are separated is in big playoff situations, making the necessary adjustments to win short series and making the right decisions in game situations in the biggest spots. Rivers has lost way too many game 7's with the better team and has underachieved with way too many loaded teams to simply call it a coincidence.

His stubbornness with lineups and rotations and his shaky in-game decision making are always going to be most noticeable in short series, when every lineup choice, play call, or review decision is going to be magnified. Rivers has lost too often in too many situations with better teams to be able to call them coincidences or to pass the blame elsewhere.

Is he a bad coach? Obviously not. Is he the guy I want running a good team with championship talent and aspirations? Based on his history, it's really hard to say that he would be the first choice or even high on a list. Odds are much better that he will underachieve again rather than to get a team over the top.

[76ciology]

After watching this vid shared to me by stormi..

Watch on YouTube

…Are we just running stuffs from previous years?

[76ciology]

Game 7 clips vs nuggets
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/202009150LAC.html
Look at Kawhi and PG’s scoring %

Game 7 Sixers vs Hawks

Watch on YouTube

Ben missing FTs
Thybulle fouling huerter’s 3
Biid 8 TOs
Ben missing FTs

[Sixerscan]

I know you do, and those things are not directly attributable to Doc. Those things can easily be attributed to better roster construction and just to the players themselves for being more experienced in both the NBA and with each other.

It sounds like you're content with "player = good, team = good, therefore Doc = good" logic, which just isn't enough for me.

Yeah, well, okay. I don’t buy the content that it’s just roster construction and players all of sudden playing better, as a result team is playing better, but coach has nothing to do with it.

So what did he specifically have to do with it then? What did Doc do that caused Embiid to take his game to another level? Because your argument looks a lot like correlation = causation to me.

It's just pretty damning to me that I can point to like 10 specific mistakes that Doc is solely responsible for, but you can't even list a single positive that is solely from Doc.

There's a lot of examples. He puts guys in positions to succeed by maximizing their abilities. Danny Green took a career high percentage of his threes from the corner last year. They've stopped entering the ball to Embiid from the middle of the court as much and entering more from the side. Tobias is dribbling less (sometimes). A bunch of guys on the team have developed those straight line drives to the basket that Doc is clearly obsessed with. They've gotten a lot better as a team at icing screens.

I think a lot of the playoff stuff comes down to him having clear rules with how he wants the guys to play, but then when you're playing a team over and over they start to take that away, and he doesn't do a great job of adjusting.

[TTP]

Yeah, well, okay. I don’t buy the content that it’s just roster construction and players all of sudden playing better, as a result team is playing better, but coach has nothing to do with it.

So what did he specifically have to do with it then? What did Doc do that caused Embiid to take his game to another level? Because your argument looks a lot like correlation = causation to me.

It's just pretty damning to me that I can point to like 10 specific mistakes that Doc is solely responsible for, but you can't even list a single positive that is solely from Doc.

There's a lot of examples. He puts guys in positions to succeed by maximizing their abilities. Danny Green took a career high percentage of his threes from the corner last year. They've stopped entering the ball to Embiid from the middle of the court as much and entering more from the side. Tobias is dribbling less (sometimes). A bunch of guys on the team have developed those straight line drives to the basket that Doc is clearly obsessed with. They've gotten a lot better as a team at icing screens.

I think a lot of the playoff stuff comes down to him having clear rules with how he wants the guys to play, but then when you're playing a team over and over they start to take that away, and he doesn't do a great job of adjusting.

These are better arguments, especially the Danny Green one. Another example would be that he's figuring out ways to get more out of Seth Curry, though I think there's even more work to be done there.

My counterargument to the bolded is that we've also seen him do things like using Maxey in Ben's role in the dunker's spot this year. I'm all for trying new things, but that's a tough one to justify, especially when he had the offseason to prepare without Ben. It looks like he just tried to sub Maxey directly into Ben's role without much thought. In no way does that maximize Maxey's skillset.

He also spent way too much time in the regular season last year playing all bench units, when a good team should be expecting to play an 8-9 man rotation in the playoffs. This is partially why he wasn't prepared when faced with adversity in the postseason, and it was extremely predictable.

I think it also took him too long to try smaller units with Matisse or Furkan at the 4 last year, leaning on Mike Scott too long, but at least he eventually got there and has shown the willingness to try Niang at the 5, Furkan at point, Joe defending the point of attack, etc. He needs to use more of the regular season to test this stuff out so that he has more options in the playoffs, and then maybe he won't have as many issues adjusting in-game.

Mostly just think that if someone comes into the thread complaining about how Doc is unfairly maligned, they should probably offer some reasons why beyond "team good = coach good".

[TTP]

After watching this vid shared to me by stormi..

Watch on YouTube

…Are we just running stuffs from previous years?

Why don't you do some actual analysis and tell me how it's different? I'm not going to watch an 11 minute Brock Landes video just to make your point for you.

[Sixerscan]

So what did he specifically have to do with it then? What did Doc do that caused Embiid to take his game to another level? Because your argument looks a lot like correlation = causation to me.

It's just pretty damning to me that I can point to like 10 specific mistakes that Doc is solely responsible for, but you can't even list a single positive that is solely from Doc.

There's a lot of examples. He puts guys in positions to succeed by maximizing their abilities. Danny Green took a career high percentage of his threes from the corner last year. They've stopped entering the ball to Embiid from the middle of the court as much and entering more from the side. Tobias is dribbling less (sometimes). A bunch of guys on the team have developed those straight line drives to the basket that Doc is clearly obsessed with. They've gotten a lot better as a team at icing screens.

I think a lot of the playoff stuff comes down to him having clear rules with how he wants the guys to play, but then when you're playing a team over and over they start to take that away, and he doesn't do a great job of adjusting.

These are better arguments, especially the Danny Green one. Another example would be that he's figuring out ways to get more out of Seth Curry, though I think there's even more work to be done there.

My counterargument to the bolded is that we've also seen him do things like using Maxey in Ben's role in the dunker's spot this year. I'm all for trying new things, but that's a tough one to justify, especially when he had the offseason to prepare without Ben. It looks like he just tried to sub Maxey directly into Ben's role without much thought. In no way does that maximize Maxey's skillset.

He also spent way too much time in the regular season last year playing all bench units, when a good team should be expecting to play an 8-9 man rotation in the playoffs. This is partially why he wasn't prepared when faced with adversity in the postseason, and it was extremely predictable.

I think it also took him too long to try smaller units with Matisse or Furkan at the 4 last year, leaning on Mike Scott too long, but at least he eventually got there and has shown the willingness to try Niang at the 5, Furkan at point, Joe defending the point of attack, etc. He needs to use more of the regular season to test this stuff out so that he has more options in the playoffs, and then maybe he won't have as many issues adjusting in-game.

Mostly just think that if someone comes into the thread complaining about how Doc is unfairly maligned, they should probably offer some reasons why beyond "team good = coach good".

Maxey is hardly in the dunker spot the whole game... sometimes guys go in that role, it's part of many NBA offenses, especially ones that post up a lot. There are spacing advantages to putting a guy there sometimes instead of having four guys on the perimeter. Sometimes guys have to do things that don't maximize their talents to allow other guys to maximize theirs (btw can someone relay that to a certain video game loving Australian?)

I don't think he's perfect or anything as I've mentioned throughout this thread and I agree with some of your complaints but I also see a lot of the positive stuff he does. Generally I feel like people blame the coach for way too much and have this unrealistic expectation of if we fire this coach the next guy is going to be perfect, and I can just point you to the history of coaches we've had over the last 20 years and show you that's probably not going to happen. The players are really what matter first and foremost.

[TTP]

There's a lot of examples. He puts guys in positions to succeed by maximizing their abilities. Danny Green took a career high percentage of his threes from the corner last year. They've stopped entering the ball to Embiid from the middle of the court as much and entering more from the side. Tobias is dribbling less (sometimes). A bunch of guys on the team have developed those straight line drives to the basket that Doc is clearly obsessed with. They've gotten a lot better as a team at icing screens.

I think a lot of the playoff stuff comes down to him having clear rules with how he wants the guys to play, but then when you're playing a team over and over they start to take that away, and he doesn't do a great job of adjusting.

These are better arguments, especially the Danny Green one. Another example would be that he's figuring out ways to get more out of Seth Curry, though I think there's even more work to be done there.

My counterargument to the bolded is that we've also seen him do things like using Maxey in Ben's role in the dunker's spot this year. I'm all for trying new things, but that's a tough one to justify, especially when he had the offseason to prepare without Ben. It looks like he just tried to sub Maxey directly into Ben's role without much thought. In no way does that maximize Maxey's skillset.

He also spent way too much time in the regular season last year playing all bench units, when a good team should be expecting to play an 8-9 man rotation in the playoffs. This is partially why he wasn't prepared when faced with adversity in the postseason, and it was extremely predictable.

I think it also took him too long to try smaller units with Matisse or Furkan at the 4 last year, leaning on Mike Scott too long, but at least he eventually got there and has shown the willingness to try Niang at the 5, Furkan at point, Joe defending the point of attack, etc. He needs to use more of the regular season to test this stuff out so that he has more options in the playoffs, and then maybe he won't have as many issues adjusting in-game.

Mostly just think that if someone comes into the thread complaining about how Doc is unfairly maligned, they should probably offer some reasons why beyond "team good = coach good".

Maxey is hardly in the dunker spot the whole game... sometimes guys go in that role, it's part of many NBA offenses, especially ones that post up a lot.There are spacing advantages to putting a guy there sometimes instead of having four guys on the perimeter. Sometimes guys have to do things that don't maximize their talents to allow other guys to maximize theirs (btw can someone relay that to a certain video game loving Australian?)

I don't think he's perfect or anything as I've mentioned throughout this thread and I agree with some of your complaints but I also see a lot of the positive stuff he does. Generally I feel like people blame the coach for way too much and have this unrealistic expectation of if we fire this coach the next guy is going to be perfect, and I can just point you to the history of coaches we've had over the last 20 years and show you that's probably not going to happen. The players are really what matter first and foremost.

I don't think I indicated anywhere that I think no one should be in the dunker's spot. Maxey being there certainly wasn't maximizing Embiid in the early games when he was holding the ball around the free throw line yelling at Maxey to GTFO, and the only logic I can think of for why Maxey kept gravitating there is that he was coached to in the preseason. Maxey isn't posting up anyone and he's definitely not playing above the rim from that spot like Ben or someone else could be.

I'm not demanding perfection from Doc. I actually think it's a good thing if he tries something out that seems logical but doesn't work out for whatever reason and think he's done a better job with that this year than last. I just want fewer obvious blunders that no one intelligent would struggle with. I also want to see him own up to it when he makes a mistake, instead of blaming it on some imaginary guy behind the bench.

I agree that people blame the coach for too much though, especially without specific legitimate criticisms. Definitely agree with your last sentence, and the GM team matters much more than the coach as well.

[Sixerscan]

These are better arguments, especially the Danny Green one. Another example would be that he's figuring out ways to get more out of Seth Curry, though I think there's even more work to be done there.

My counterargument to the bolded is that we've also seen him do things like using Maxey in Ben's role in the dunker's spot this year. I'm all for trying new things, but that's a tough one to justify, especially when he had the offseason to prepare without Ben. It looks like he just tried to sub Maxey directly into Ben's role without much thought. In no way does that maximize Maxey's skillset.

He also spent way too much time in the regular season last year playing all bench units, when a good team should be expecting to play an 8-9 man rotation in the playoffs. This is partially why he wasn't prepared when faced with adversity in the postseason, and it was extremely predictable.

I think it also took him too long to try smaller units with Matisse or Furkan at the 4 last year, leaning on Mike Scott too long, but at least he eventually got there and has shown the willingness to try Niang at the 5, Furkan at point, Joe defending the point of attack, etc. He needs to use more of the regular season to test this stuff out so that he has more options in the playoffs, and then maybe he won't have as many issues adjusting in-game.

Mostly just think that if someone comes into the thread complaining about how Doc is unfairly maligned, they should probably offer some reasons why beyond "team good = coach good".

Maxey is hardly in the dunker spot the whole game... sometimes guys go in that role, it's part of many NBA offenses, especially ones that post up a lot.There are spacing advantages to putting a guy there sometimes instead of having four guys on the perimeter. Sometimes guys have to do things that don't maximize their talents to allow other guys to maximize theirs (btw can someone relay that to a certain video game loving Australian?)

I don't think he's perfect or anything as I've mentioned throughout this thread and I agree with some of your complaints but I also see a lot of the positive stuff he does. Generally I feel like people blame the coach for way too much and have this unrealistic expectation of if we fire this coach the next guy is going to be perfect, and I can just point you to the history of coaches we've had over the last 20 years and show you that's probably not going to happen. The players are really what matter first and foremost.

I don't think I indicated anywhere that I think no one should be in the dunker's spot. Maxey being there certainly wasn't maximizing Embiid in the early games when he was holding the ball around the free throw line yelling at Maxey to GTFO, and the only logic I can think of for why Maxey kept gravitating there is that he was coached to in the preseason. Maxey isn't posting up anyone and he's definitely not playing above the rim from that spot like Ben or someone else could be.

I'm not demanding perfection from Doc. I actually think it's a good thing if he tries something out that seems logical but doesn't work out for whatever reason and think he's done a better job with that this year than last. I just want fewer obvious blunders that no one intelligent would struggle with. I also want to see him own up to it when he makes a mistake, instead of blaming it on some imaginary guy behind the bench.

I agree that people blame the coach for too much though, especially without specific legitimate criticisms. Definitely agree with your last sentence, and the GM team matters much more than the coach as well.

Being in the dunker spot isn't about posting up or offensive rebounding, I mean if you can do that that's great but at the end of the day it's really about spacing. Based on the geometry of the court sometimes it's not best for all 4 guys to stand on the perimeter.

I have no idea whether those specific situations were on the coaching or Maxey just being a young player that is going to do the wrong thing sometimes. Remember that NBA offenses aren't like a firm playbook, a lot of it is based on feel and the players making reads on the court.

Definitely agree Doc screws up sometimes and would generally wish he experimented more. His entire coaching strategy can be summed up by that "feed the pig" phrase he loves. A good thing about all this covid and injury and Ben stuff is it forces him to try different stuff, hopefully it leads him to new things that work.

[TTP]

Regardless of whether it works out, Doc's decision to start Reed and stick him on DeRozan gets a big thumbs up from me. Need more stuff like that. Get wild with it in the games that don't matter.

[blargh]

Being in the dunker spot isn't about posting up or offensive rebounding, I mean if you can do that that's great but at the end of the day it's really about spacing. Based on the geometry of the court sometimes it's not best for all 4 guys to stand on the perimeter.

JJ actually used to start a lot of sets in that position, as a starting point to run DHO curls. Of course Maxey doesn’t really have the perfect skillset for those plays either right now.

[sixers4real]

Regardless of whether it works out, Doc's decision to start Reed and stick him on DeRozan gets a big thumbs up from me. Need more stuff like that. Get wild with it in the games that don't matter.

I was about to post this in your original comment on pointing something Doc had ever done, and you did it before me.
I guess Doc has finally earned a positive moment?

I think Doc is doing a fantastic job this season with players he’s having in the first 10 games.

[mjkvol]

Regardless of whether it works out, Doc's decision to start Reed and stick him on DeRozan gets a big thumbs up from me. Need more stuff like that. Get wild with it in the games that don't matter.

I was about to post this in your original comment on pointing something Doc had ever done, and you did it before me.
I guess Doc has finally earned a positive moment?

I think Doc is doing a fantastic job this season with players he’s having in the first 10 games.

No doubt, and the Reed start was very inspired. I just wonder how he's going to handle the return of Harris with this group playing such pretty, free-flowing basketball without his ball stopping ways.

[Sixerscan]

Regardless of whether it works out, Doc's decision to start Reed and stick him on DeRozan gets a big thumbs up from me. Need more stuff like that. Get wild with it in the games that don't matter.

I was about to post this in your original comment on pointing something Doc had ever done, and you did it before me.
I guess Doc has finally earned a positive moment?

I think Doc is doing a fantastic job this season with players he’s having in the first 10 games.

No doubt, and the Reed start was very inspired. I just wonder how he's going to handle the return of Harris with this group playing such pretty, free-flowing basketball without his ball stopping ways.

The last game Tobias played they put up 122 blowing out a team that made the eastern conference finals last year. I think it will be fine assuming covid isn't hitting him too hard.

[76ciology]

It was fitting for Doc to get his 1000th win by coaching an undermanned team against one of the top teams in the conference. While having a 6th man lord korkmaz carrying one of the biggest reasons, may even be the biggest reason, for the team to victory.

[Murray_17]

Without Harris and playing against the Kncks tomorrow i would not be surprised if we keep using Reed as a starter, you need to throw a big body to Randle.

[76ciology]

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[DCasey91]

Knicks are weak in the interior even with a shot blocker like Noel. Randle and Barrett are overrated now. Rose can be a problem. We are a gunner team they can theoretically shut us down like the Pistons did for the majority because of size not because of skill. Lucky Pistons offense is arse

They blew us out last time so expect some fire from the lads. Let’s see Doc adjustments second time around. Knicks play straight up and down vanilla besides Rose and Quickley so defend like that and it shouldn’t be a worry.

This will be an interesting game imo.

[mithrandir17]

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Damn, we have two players going toe to toe with previous MVPs. It will probably hurt their MVP chances since they are both in the same team like what happened to Curry and Durant in GSW.

[Negrodamus]

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I don’t know about you but this definitely feels sustainable.