The Downfall of Doc Rivers' Reputation
The Downfall of Doc Rivers' Reputation
MOC looks at how Doc's refusal to take responsibility for his repeat playoff failures has defined not just his own coaching legacy, but the very nature of the teams he leads towards certain collapse.
It wasn’t all that long ago – 3.5 years ago, when the Sixers hired him, to be exact – that Doc Rivers was generally regarded as not only a good coach, but a very serious figure in the NBA community. He had lots of cachet and respect from media, fans, and players, and some degree of immunity from criticism given the championship success of his Big Three-era Celtics teams. Sure, there were corners of the internet that (fairly) clowned him for his playoff failures, especially coming out of his bubble collapse – but he was at least regarded as a serious person who commanded respect from the community at large.
In Rivers’ three seasons in Philadelphia, the franchise experienced three of their five winningest seasons of this century. The team exceeded their pre-season over/under each of his three years. They were a perennial second round team before he was here, and they were a perennial second round team by the time he left.
And yet, there are almost no words to describe how damaging the past 3.5 years have been to Rivers’ reputation. Nowadays, Rivers trends on Twitter on almost a daily basis – usually getting ripped to shreds for something insane that he said, most of the time justifiably so.
I just find all of this fascinating. How did a man with so much stature destroy his reputation in such little time, without committing some heinous off-court act, and also while winning 50+ games and a playoff series every single year?
Before the Sixers take the court in Milwaukee tonight, I’d like to do a deep dive on the recent past of the Bucks’ new coach, and how he should be looked at moving forward. How did Rivers’ reputation go this far south? How good of a coach is he, exactly? Why do his teams keep failing in the exact same ways?
I’ll start off by stating something I’ve stated several times previously: I do not like Doc Rivers’ personality. I think he is extremely arrogant. I think he is obnoxious and condescending with how he addresses the media, has little regard for the truth, and is completely delusional in regards to his ability and status within the coaching ranks. While I do think the discourse around him has jumped the shark, he has brought every bit of it upon himself.
But here, I’d like to do something that’s not always easy: set personal distaste aside to make a fair evaluation of someone you personally dislike. So, let’s start by walking through the timeline of how, exactly, Rivers made a villain out of himself with the fans throughout his time here in Philly.
Throughout his first season with the Sixers, Rivers faced very little scrutiny. The team exceeded expectations, had fun vibes, and won a ton of games en route to securing the No. 1 seed in the East. It wasn’t until the playoffs rolled around that Rivers started drawing attention to himself with the way he talked about Ben Simmons. All year, Rivers had positioned himself as a firm supporter of Simmons. He did encourage him to get to the rim more, but he regularly balked at the idea that he needed to shoot jump shots, and generally eschewed any criticism of him as bogus.
During the 2021 first round matchup with the Washington Wizards, Rivers took his Simmons stanning to the next level. In a Game 4 loss in which Joel Embiid exited the game in the first quarter with injury, Simmons failed to lead the team to victory, as the Wizards employed a Hack-a-Ben strategy that resulted in him going 5-11 at the free throw line.
After the game, Rivers responded to a question about Simmons’ subpar play by saying, "You guys keep this Ben Simmons narrative alive, which to me is freakin' insane [with] how good this guy is and all the things he does… And I just don't understand why that's not sinking in, in our city… If I'm Ben at some point I'd get tired of it. I just would.”
Rivers had said many positive things about Simmons all year, but this was the first time I can remember the emergence of his classic condescension and antagonization towards the fans. Of course the fans were right to worry about Simmons’ performance. He was showing early signs of an epic implosion. But Rivers took that chance to warn them that they were being unreasonable and were going to run him out of town.
As Simmons continued to self-immolate throughout the Hawks series, and criticism of him mounted, Rivers’ public defenses of the struggling Simmons only became more forceful. As the Hawks employed the Hack-a-Ben strategy, and Simmons bricked free throw after free throw (he shot 33% from the line in that series), questions arose about whether the Sixers needed to bench Simmons whenever the Hawks employed that strategy. Rivers defiantly disagreed, saying, “if anybody wants us to do that, just let me know, and then I’ll know you don’t know basketball.”
Later in the series, Simmons said himself that he needed to be more aggressive after taking just one shot in the second half of a Game 4 loss. Rivers, for some reason, flatly denied the validity of Simmons' comments, saying, “I actually couldn’t disagree with that more.”
Finally, after weeks of showing blind support that surpassed the behavior of even Simmons' most insane online supporters, Rivers did a complete 180 after Simmons’ infamous no-show performance in Game 7, replying to a question about whether or not he can be the point guard of a championship team by saying, “I don’t know that question, or the answer to that right now. So, I don’t know the answer to that.”
For months after that quote, Rivers insisted that his words were twisted and that people were misrepresenting what he meant. I simply don’t know how that’s possible when you flatly stated, “I don’t know the answer to that,” but that was perhaps Sixers’ fans first taste of Rivers’ willingness to completely disregard facts in order to maintain his own reputation.
Despite the horrific nature of how they lost that series (including two massive blown leads) and all of the weirdness of his behavior around the Simmons situation, the amount of animosity towards Rivers in Philadelphia wasn’t all that high at the time. Simmons himself had absorbed the vast majority of the blame, and it certainly helped that the team was vastly exceeding expectations throughout the first half of the 2021-22 season, even as Simmons’ hold-out left them a core player short. The Simmons-less team endeared itself to the fans, and everyone was excited for a potential trade at the deadline.
Rivers did have one dust-up with the media during that stretch, offering his famous, “Would you ask Pop that question?” in response to a simple question about what role his coaching decisions could have played in that night’s loss. His response to that question was obviously ridiculous, and was a good insight into his complete aversion to any semblance of self-accountability. He is above reproach. Don’t ask him those questions.
The deadline eventually arrived, with James Harden coming to town, and in his opening press conference after the trade, Harden said that Rivers was one of the reasons he wanted to come to Philly, and called him “one of the best coaches to ever coach the game of basketball.”
Not long afterwards, though, it became clear that the Sixers had a disaster on their hands unrelated to Harden. After dealing Andre Drummond to Brooklyn as part of the Harden deal, their backup center play was simply unimaginably bad. First, Paul Millsap failed to provide any value. Then, Willie Cauley-Stein stunk up the joint. And, finally, DeAndre Jordan came in on a buyout, and was perhaps the most cooked of all.
And yet, because of Doc’s unflinching trust in veterans and his severe aversion to playing young players, he stuck with Jordan, despite Paul Reed looking good in spot minutes. It was blatantly obvious to anyone with eyeballs that Reed was the better option, but Rivers continued playing Jordan, and regarded any questioning of his decision as ridiculous.
After Reed scored 25 points in the final game of the regular season against Detroit, Rivers was asked if he regretted not playing Reed more minutes earlier in the season, to which he replied that they like Jordan, they will continue to do so as long as the matchup dictates, and that, “We have a whole coaching staff, who, I’m just going to guess, knows a little bit more [than you do].”
Using logical fallacies such as appeal to authority is always a bad idea, but it’s especially bad when you are as wildly wrong as Rivers was here. In that same press conference, Rivers dropped his now famous poo-pooing of Reed, stating, “We’re not gonna go on the Paul Reed victory tour. So don’t start. We’re trying to win a world championship, man.”
It wasn’t hard to tell that Rivers was really reveling in the Reed discourse here, and sort of enjoyed antagonizing the fans and media who were (rightfully, I might again add) advocating for Reed to see more minutes. But the Victory Tour quote was simply too far – frankly a disgrace for a head coach. Paul Reed was a 22 year old on his first NBA contract, hoping to carve out a career for himself in the league. For Doc, his freaking head coach, to be pouring cold water on his breakout performance is an absolute shame. That’s not how the NBA fraternity is supposed to work, but Doc cared more about sticking it to the media than any of that.
Despite all of the clashes with the media, Rivers continued playing Jordan, even electing to start him when Embiid was hurt in the second round. Asked to explain why he went to Jordan, Rivers said, “We like DJ. We're going to keep starting him whether you like it or not. That's what we're going to do, because our guys believe in him.”
Great, thanks for the explanation. Again, Rivers’ obvious reveling in the clash with the media (and fans, via the media) was bound to create distaste for him.
A week prior to that, after a 3-0 lead over the Raptors turned to a 3-2 lead, Rivers decided to passionately defend his history of blown playoff leads, saying in part that, “No one gives me credit for getting up against the Pistons [in 2003], who won the title. That was an eighth seed. I want you to go back and look at that roster. I dare you to go back and look at that roster. And you would say, 'What a hell of a coaching job.' Really.”
Setting aside the fact that the Pistons did not win the title that year (they won it in 2004, the following year), it was another classic example of Rivers’ willingness to shit all over his players in order to protect his own reputation. The logical takeaway from his comments would be that the coach deserves the credit for going up 3-1, but the players deserve the blame for simply not being good enough to close the series out. It’s the same flawed logic over and over again. In that same press conference, Rivers also defended his two other blown 3-1 leads, blaming them on injuries and the environment of the bubble, respectively. These defenses were more factual, but with equally dubious logic.
A couple weeks later, the Sixers lost their second round series to the Heat in disgraceful fashion by no-showing Games 5 and 6 after two thrilling wins in Games 3 and 4. In his press conference after the series, Rivers would state, “I came to the conclusion we weren’t good enough to beat the Heat.” Again, a little light on self-reflection there!
When asked about his job security during that same press conference, Rivers replied, “I don't worry about my job. I do a terrific job… I worked my butt off to get this team here. When I first got here, no one picked us to be anywhere. Again, this year, the same thing.”
Rivers acting like he had moved mountains to get the Sixers from a perennial 50-win team who loses in the first or second round, to… the exact same thing, was a perfect encapsulation of his thirst for credit and his allergy to accountability.
The following regular season wasn’t quite as rocky for Rivers. He didn’t have as many clashes with the media, and the team (yet again) had a very good regular season, notching their most wins in a season in 22 years. He did talk himself into some hot water in April of last year, but not for Sixers-related reasons: He stated that his lob city Clippers teams were “never going to win… We just didn't get along well enough as a group, and you can't win without cooperation. That's the only way you can win.”
Every team that he was a part of that fell short was never going to win, and there was nothing he could have done. How convenient.
And, as far as that year’s Sixers went, the season ended in the same way it always does – a humiliating second round loss, which included blowing a 3-2 series lead. In the aftermath, Rivers didn’t take the same fiery stands he did the year before about his job performance, but did fail to take any sort of accountability for his role in the situation, merely saying, “I thought we had opportunities...I don't know what else we could have done.”
This sort of repeating pattern – a regular season filled with lots of wins but plenty of infuriating quotes, followed by a massively disappointing playoff loss with no accountability to follow – is what has defined Rivers for more than a decade now. It’s been the same thing over and over and over again. And seemingly everyone is tired of it; while not everyone thinks Rivers is the worst coach of all time, there is absolutely zero appetite left to defend him.
The irony is that certain aspects of his coaching are, in fact, very easy to defend. Rivers’ credentials as a regular season coach are practically unimpeachable. There really is no case whatsoever to be made that he is a bad regular season coach: In the regular season, he meets or exceeds expectations just about every year, sometimes dramatically.
In his first (COVID-shortened) year with the Sixers, their Vegas over/under for wins was 43.5, and they were expected to finish sixth in the Eastern Conference. They finished the year with a Conference-leading 49 wins. The year prior to Rivers’ arrival, the Sixers touted one of the league’s best defensive personnel groups, yet ranked eighth in defensive rating. In Rivers’ first year, despite having considerably worse defensive personnel, his schematic adjustments from the prior year helped allow the team to rank second in defense.
In addition to problems with his defensive schemes, Brett Brown’s offensive schemes were also overly complex, and revolved around elbow touches and dribble hand-offs. Given the personnel, Rivers was correct to come in and dramatically up the frequency of isolations and pick and rolls, and the team benefitted as a result.
He helped Joel Embiid tap into certain things offensively that Brown had never thought of, such as stationing him primarily at the nail rather than the post. Embiid himself deserves the overwhelming majority of the credit for upping his productivity from All-Star to MVP-caliber over this period, but Doc’s foresight to use him as an isolation player rather than a post-up player helped Embiid change his offensive approach.
The Bucks are currently enjoying the same type of boost in the immediate aftermath of adding Rivers; Adrian Griffin’s defensive schemes were terrible fits for that personnel, and Rivers immediately restoring far more basic principles has dramatically improved that team’s defense. The team ranked 17th in defensive rating prior to his arrival, and has ranked 3rd in the span since. The team started off slow under his watch and everyone was happy to get their jokes off, but the improvement they’ve shown from Griffin’s ill-fated schemes to Rivers’ common sense solutions is obvious.
And therein lies the crux of Rivers as a coach. If there is an endorsement to be made of him as a tactician, it’s that he doesn’t overcomplicate things, and his Plan A is usually the right plan. Whereas most NBA fans regard Rivers as a completely inept tactician, that simply isn’t true; one need only look at the before vs. after of his previous two teams, and the obvious impact of the changes in schemes that he implemented. There are plenty of coaches in the NBA who install offensive and defensive systems that are doomed to fail and/or are completely wrong for their personnel; Rivers has never been one of them.
In that sense, I found the controversy around JJ Redick’s comments on First Take a few weeks ago to be a perfect encapsulation of Rivers. Redick argued that Rivers never takes accountability for his team’s performances, whereas his critics replied that Rivers elevated Redick’s status as a player with his coaching decisions, and he should be thankful rather than antagonistic towards him.
In reality, both sides are right. Rivers genuinely did utilize Redick in ways that no other coach had prior – and his team thrived as a result of it. In 2014-15, the year that the Warriors became the Warriors and Curry won his first MVP, do you know who had the league’s best offensive rating by a healthy margin? Doc Rivers’ Los Angeles Clippers.
And yet, that same year, Rivers’ Clippers also had a disgusting, humiliating, 3-1 blown series lead at the hands of the Rockets before they could meet the Warriors in the Conference Finals.
And therein lies the summary of the past 15 years of Rivers as a coach: a very good regular season coach whose teams always – post-Boston – seem to shit the bed when it matters most. Rivers’ weakness is not that he is some brain-dead, inept tactician whose philosophies are decades behind, but rather, that his teams’ identities always seem to take on that of his own – a complete lack of accountability, cohesion and mental toughness. And, so, the blowback to Redick is right that Rivers made certain tactical decisions with Redick that were inarguably great for him personally and the team as a whole, but Redick is also correct in saying that Rivers’ failure to take accountability and establish a team’s cultural identity is a fatal flaw.
And given that Rivers has proven himself to be someone who tries to protect his own reputation at all costs and points the blame at other people any time things go wrong, how could any NBA locker room not take on that same mentality? And if they take on that mentality, how could they possibly ever break through against equally talented, but more together and mentally tough teams in the playoffs?
After the Sixers’ Game 7 loss to the Celtics in the playoffs, Coach Nick at BBallBreakdown did a great film analysis of how and why Rivers’ teams always fall short in the playoffs. The answer was not some hidden schematic principle, but rather a complete loss of focus and execution – astoundingly repetitive in their nature.
And so, the conundrum of Rivers is really quite simple. Teams often follow their coach’s lead in their overall approach and attitude, and so, his teams fail for all of the reasons that he does. His teams are him. They are built upon a flawed identity, and so, they always crack when it matters most.
Looking ahead, it’s certainly not impossible that the Bucks break through under his watch. I suppose the strongest possible endorsement you could make of Rivers’ playoff performances is this: his teams tend to do about the same in the playoffs before and after his watch. Chris Paul, Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, James Harden, etc. etc. have all had major playoff stinkers without Doc Rivers as their coach, and they had major playoff stinkers with Doc Rivers as their coach. So, with a team and a player that has already been there and done that in Giannis and the Bucks, it’s certainly possible that they can get back to the summit under Rivers’ watch.
But with a leader who is so obviously out for himself – so clearly in search of credit more so than wins – one wonders if that slowly, but surely infects the team beneath him, as well. And if that day does come where we get to see the Bucks suffer the same sort of lifeless, confused, self-inflicted loss in the playoffs, absolutely no one will wonder why.
Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health. Get 20% off E-Lyte, Gut+, and all Body Bio products with promo code FIRECJ at Body Bio’s website.
Lot of suppressed memories, thanks
I would only add that Doc's lack of creativity and willingness/ability to make adjustments looked incredibly on display during last season's playoff flameout against the Celtics. Once Mazzula put his 2 big lineup out there Doc just looked flummoxed.