Kendrick Perkins defends Sixers coach Doc Rivers from past criticisms

ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins defends Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers from his past criticisms.

Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers is one of the most successful coaches in NBA history as a guy who has had a high winning percentage in his career, he helped turn around the culture of the Los Angeles Clippers, and he has an NBA title under his belt.

However, he has faced criticisms in the past due to the leads his teams have blown in the past. Even with the Sixers in the 2021 playoff run, Philadelphia blew a 26-point lead in Game 5 at home in the semifinals and then fell in Game 7 at home to the Atlanta Hawks with the Sixers as the No. 1 seed.

Even heading into this Round 1 series with the Toronto Raptors, a lot of prognosticators believed that Rivers would be outcoached by Toronto’s Nick Nurse and the Sixers were a trendy pick to be upset by the Raptors.

Instead, Philadelphia has a 3-0 lead and Rivers called a critical timeout in Game 3 on Wednesday to lead to Joel Embiid’s game-winning triple. ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins gave a lot of praise to Rivers for that play:

It was Doc Rivers actually running across the court to actually call the timeout. That’s coaching. Two, it was him getting attention and awareness in the time out to make sure that everybody was dialed in because again, it’s five people on the floor. It only takes one to mess up the play. Three, it’s the trust that those players have in Doc Rivers and Doc Rivers’ has in his MVP to run that type of play for his center to get the ball basically off a curl, not looking at the basket to turn and shoot like he was JJ Reddick or Reggie Miller or somebody. So when I think about Doc and I’m thinking about this series, all I was hearing was was that Nick Nurse is going to coach circles around Doc Rivers. It looked like the complete opposite to me. I have faith in Doc Rivers when it comes to putting guys in position to be successful offensively because Doc Rivers used to go to sleep with his clipboard on the side of the bed because he used to think of plays and he didn’t want to forget them. Pop out of his asleep or if he happened to wake up and the play was going on, he would draw it up so he wouldn’t forget him. When we were in in practices, we used to work on five-second type situations, .6 type of situations, and he will make it clear, I need every one to focus. We started getting fined if everyone wasn’t standing up watching Doc Rivers draw up plays in a timeout.

Rivers will look to guide the Sixers to a Round 1 sweep over the Raptors with a Game 4 win on Saturday afternoon in Toronto.

This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!

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