One becomes a coach in the NBA in order to guide their team to a championship no matter who is on the roster. That is the challenge put in front of Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers who is now presented with a big star duo of Joel Embiid and James Harden.
The expectations are raised now. The Sixers were the No. 1 seed in 2021 before flaming out in Game 7 of the Eastern semifinals. Then the Ben Simmons saga happened and that derailed a lot of things with this team in terms of what was expected of them to win a title that season.
Now, Simmons is gone, Harden is here, and they will have championship expectations again to reach the finals and win a championship this season. That is something Rivers is relishing.
“Let me repeat this to you and everybody else, one more time,” Rivers said. “You and no one else can put more pressure on myself than I do. It will never happen. I’m in this to win. I’m always in this to win and when you make that decision, you understand that there’s gonna be pressure with it and there should be because if it wasn’t, everyone would be champions. I think the reason we did this deal is so we can jump into the fray.”
With that being said, the Sixers do not have much time on the floor to jell in order to have chemistry leading into the playoffs. They still have to find another shooter to replace Seth Curry and they now have a hole at the backup big man spot with Andre Drummond gone as well.
Harden gives the Sixers a huge upgrade at the guard spot, but they still have work to do in terms of finding the right pieces to get it done. Chemistry is a really important factor in terms of having success out on the floor.
“That’s something we’ll find out,” Rivers added. “We did it with the belief we do, obviously. Losing Drum, we’re probably going to look at the buyout market. Obviously, you never know who’s gonna be in the buyout market these days so we’ll look at that. The quicker we can get together, the better. We don’t have a lot of time.”
When one looks around the league, the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks have been around each other for a while, and then there are the runner-ups in the Phoenix Suns. The Miami Heat are a factor as are the Brooklyn Nets and the Chicago Bulls in the East.
“The Phoenix’s of the world and there’s teams—Milwaukee and Miami—they’ve been together, Milwaukee, three years, four years as a group,” Rivers stated. “We have to get it done quick.”
The expectation is that Harden will miss the team’s matchups with the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Cleveland Cavaliers. That means his first chance to really debut will be Tuesday when the team has 26 games left. That is not a lot of time to really get everything down pat before the playoffs. This will be a challenge for Rivers and everybody involved to get this right.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
[mm-video type=playlist id=01f09kz5ecxq9bp57b player_id=01eqbvq570kgj8vfs7 image=https://sixerswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[listicle id=59894]
[lawrence-related id=59985,59981,59966]