The Philadelphia 76ers are entering a new era of their franchise as they have officially hired Doc Rivers as the 25th coach in franchise history. The Sixers are bringing in a new coach for the first time in seven seasons after letting Brett Brown go on August 24.
The challenge for Rivers is to now come in and get things done on the floor such as bringing a championship to the city of Philadelphia. The two guys who are leading that charge are stars Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid who receive a lot of criticism for coming up short in the playoffs, but there is also a lot of success the two of them have had.
“They’ve won 65% of the games that they’ve played in,” said Rivers on Monday. “It clearly works when they play together. If you watch my teams, I don’t get lost in what position guys play…Just looking at the numbers, when those two play together, they win 65% of the games they play in. That’s a good thing.”
Philadelphia ranked 13th on offensive rating in the 2019-20 season as they were working through an awkward roster that included big man Al Horford next to Embiid and Josh Richardson replacing JJ Redick out on the perimeter. On top of that, Tobias Harris has not had the same shooting touch that he had under Rivers with the Los Angeles Clippers.
However, those concerns aren’t there for Rivers who likes the makeup of his new roster.
“I look at how many points we score as a team,” Rivers added. “I don’t care how we score. My teams have always been very good offensively in the top five overall and we score points. We got Ben that can score points, we got Joel, we got Tobias, we have Shake (Milton), we have Josh, this team’s loaded with talent. We just have to figure out how to make it work the best.”
The Sixers are a team that has a lot of talent and they have a lot of good pieces they can turn to. The fact is at the moment, they need to be able to have somebody who put these pieces together. That is the challenge Rivers will have to face with this new team. [lawrence-related id=38136,38124,38121]