The Philadelphia 76ers were a team in the offseason conducting their first coaching search in seven seasons after firing Brett Brown in August. They had a few candidates before they decided on Doc Rivers to be the new leading man on the bench.
One of those candidates was Tyronn Lue who won a championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016 and had success leading superstars such as LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. It appeared that Lue was going to be the leading man for the job in Philadelphia, but there was one main roadblock in his way.
Big man Joel Embiid opposed the Sixers for wanting to hire Lue. According to Bill Oram and Joe Vardon of The Athletic, Embiid did not like the optics that Lue’s main ally was agent Rich Paul who represented Ben Simmons.
Oram and Vardon report:
The Sixers finally set up an interview with Lue for Sept. 29, but it was already clear that momentum was not on his side.
Lue had an ally in the Sixers’ search — super agent Rich Paul, who represents James (hence his ties to Lue) and Philadelphia star Ben Simmons. But sources across the NBA said the Sixers’ other star, Joel Embiid, ultimately opposed Lue as coach for X’s and O’s reasons and for the optics of Simmons’ “guy” getting the job.
This could be another national media story trying to drive a wedge between Embiid and Simmons–Embiid did call out the national media a bit earlier in training camp for this type of thing.
However, it does make some sense that Embiid did not want this to go through for that reason. He is the team’s best player and it does come down to a power struggle at times with star players in these certain situations. At the end of the day, Rivers is the coach of this team and he seems to be a guy everybody can agree on.
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