Doc Rivers opens up on Joel Embiid, James Harden, Sixers after firing

Number one, he has to be healthy. In the playoffs and this was the healthiest, but he still wasn’t 100%. Then number two for Jo, is he’s got to make all his players better in the playoffs and Jo, his numbers are unfair, because he’s really—if you look at his numbers in the last three years in the playoffs, compared to his regular season numbers, they’re not very good. But a lot of that is due—the first year I had him he hurt his knee. The next year, he hits his face and tears ligaments in his hand, and then this year he has a knee injury and he was never the same once he came back this year. So health is number one.

Then the second thing is Jo and he has the ability, I stayed on him daily. He has the ability to make his teammates better and when he does it, if you look at our games this year when he did that and dominated, it’s hard to go away from Joel Embiid. It really is. He’s just got to do that on a consistent basis. Not just on the court, but also off the court. Just be around the guys and spend time with your guys and let them know that you love them because they love you. And so I thought that Jo in the three years, you can see the growth there. I think we forget how young he is. We also forget his first two years he didn’t play and I’m telling you that sets a tone. Like when you miss two years and you’re sitting there all the time and you get used to not playing in games. That sets the tone. Ben Simmons went through the same thing. He missed the first year and so fighting early on when I first got there was huge. ‘Jo, you need to play tonight. Jo, you can play tonight’ and now he’s up in games and so he’s doing that. He’s crossed that barrier. The next one will be making his teammates better. When he does that, it’s gonna be hard to stop and I think he will do it. I just think we forget his age and we forget how we started in this league.

You can feel it all through the organization and Elton (Brand), when he brought me in, that’s what he told me like ‘Hey, this is not just about coaching his team. We’re bringing you here to change the culture’ and he meant everywhere and he allowed me to come in and we looked through the whole organization. I’m talking about trainers, equipment managers, everybody..if you’re not on board, if you’re not trying to win and that’s not what you’re breathing every day. For me, it’s time to go, and I mean that with everyone in the organization and overall, I thought we were starting to get it done. You can see the change in the culture, and so I think the growth of that is there. I think they still have some growth in that department as well. Alert is the word I’m using and sometimes you can’t worry about that. You just got to do your job. You got to worry about the basketball part of it and that’s the reaction to what everything happens, but their culture has definitely gotten better. I had a big part in that and now the growth from there, it still has to get better and if that happens, then they have a chance. If it doesn’t happen, they’re not gonna win. It has to keep growing.

When I look back on that game, because that was the decider, right? Basketball-wise, we got to get the ball to Joel more, and trust me, we came out in plays where it should have gone there and it just didn’t get there, and so those are big plays. Now listen, Joel was not having a great game, but neither was (Jayson) Tatum, and my belief is that you still go to your guy and you keep letting him save the day for you, and I thought we went away from that and then the second part of the fluky part. Tatum, if you remember the big play, we gambled on a play somewhere, someone gambled, but I can’t remember who it was. Maybe Maxey. I don’t even know who it was. Went for a steal, didn’t get it and they gambled on Jayson Tatum and left him wide open, and he made a corner in front of the Celtic bench. And that was—it takes these guys but one shot and that was…and now he’s on. And from that point, we were dead.

It was challenging, more because we were fighting two things, and not like visually fighting, it was James is so good at playing one way, and the way I believe you have to play to win, in some ways, is different because it’s a lot of giving up the ball, moving the ball, coming back to the ball. I would have loved to have him younger, when that was easier for him because giving up the ball and getting back the ball is hard. It’s physical, it’s exhausting. So, it would have been interesting if I would have had him younger where he could have done that more. Coming off of dribble handoffs, going downhill. He didn’t finish as well as he finished because he’s older, and that happens. So, yeah, at times, to get him to move it and get him to play the way I needed him to play. I thought the first half of the year, we were the best team in the game. I thought James was playing perfect basketball. He was the point guard of the team. He was still scoring, but he was doing more playmaking and scoring. Then in the second half, he started scoring more, trying to score more, and I thought we got stagnant at times. I thought we changed.

You want a guy, and I think James did a little bit of that, like James would speak up, and so you need that—you need you need another alpha in the room. So if Jo is not doing something to call Jo on ‘Jo, you gotta do this’ and Jo will listen to that.

If I could pick the perfect guy without a name, it would be a big point guard who could score and the reason is we need a playmaker other than Joel and (Tyrese) Maxey right now is more of a scorer. He’s a downhill scorer with speed. The dude brings joy to every coach in the room every day like you would love Tyrese Maxey just every day being Tyrese Maxey, but when we can free him up to just go score and you can make a case like a (Manu) Ginobili who at times was their point with his passing, gave them toughness, was an attacker, was great off the ball, but that allowed Tony Parker to just go and be free. Like someone in that category would be the perfect fit.