Doc on past playoff failures: ‘Tell the whole story’

CAMDEN, NJ – The Philadelphia 76ers practiced here Wednesday morning ahead of a return to Toronto for Game 6 of their Eastern Conference first-round playoff series against the Raptors Thursday night, halfway through what would be steep after taking a 3-0 lead in this best-of-seven series.

76ers coach Doc Rivers is the only coach to suffer more than one loss after taking a 3-1 series lead — something that has happened to him three times in his career. But when Rivers was asked about playoff history on Wednesday, he said it was necessary to go back and check the record.

“Well, it’s easy to use me as an example,” Rivers said after the team finished practice. “But I would like you to tell the whole story with me. Okay?

“My Orlando team [in 2003] was the eighth seed. No one gives me credit for facing the [Detroit] Pistons, who won the title. It was an eighth seed. I want you to go back and look at this list. I dare you to go back and look at this list. And you’d say, ‘What a coaching job. Really.

“I mean, the Clipper team [in 2015] that we lost 3-1, Chris Paul didn’t play the first two games and was playing on one leg, and we didn’t have a home court. And then the last [when the Clippers lost to the Denver Nuggets in 2020], for me, it’s the one we blew. It’s the one I took. We blew that. And it was in the bubble. And anything can happen in the bubble. There is no home court. Game 7 would have been in Los Angeles.

“But, it just happens. So I would say with me, some of them are… I always have to do better. I always take my own responsibility. And then some of them, circumstances happen. This one , let’s earn it , and we don’t have to talk about it.”

In 2003, Rivers and the Orlando Magic — led by future Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady, who won the scoring title that season — took that 3-1 lead over the top-seeded Pistons. It was the first season the NBA returned to a best-of-seven first-round series. Famously, McGrady – who never made it out of the first round of the playoffs until the end of his career with San Antonio – said after winning Game 4 to take that 3-1 lead: “It feels good to get into the second round.”

Detroit quickly won the next three games by a total of 61 points to advance to the second round, then eventually lost to the New Jersey Nets in the Eastern Conference Finals before winning an NBA title the following season. .

In 2015, Rivers took that 3-1 lead over, coincidentally, current 76ers star point guard James Harden and president of basketball operations Daryl Morey, who were both then with the Houston Rockets, to lose the last three games of this series. That included a stunning home slump in Game 6, when Houston beat the Clippers 40-15 (mostly with Harden watching from the bench) to turn what was a 13-point deficit early in the quarter into a 12-point win. , before closing the series in Game 7.

As Rivers said, however, the loss in 2020 is the most memorable. The Clippers – led by Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, whom they had acquired the previous summer, and the choice of many to win the championship – took a 3-1 lead over the Nuggets, only to blow two-man leads. numbers in Each of the final three games of the series will be kicked out of the NBA bubble at the Walt Disney World Resort outside of Orlando, Florida in truly shocking fashion.

For now, however, the 76ers are simply trying to avoid adding to their already difficult history. Just last year, the 76ers took a 26-point lead in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals series with the Atlanta Hawks – before losing again on their home turf in Game 7 in the match in which Ben Simmons let a late open dunk pass. in the fourth quarter, beginning his path to leaving Philadelphia for good.

So far in this series, the 76ers have routed Toronto in the first two games, earned an overtime win behind heroic Joel Embiid in Game 3, then watched the Raptors more or less control games 4 and 5. Rivers said it can be tough for one team to shut down another team but after the way the series unraveled, both teams know what they need to do to win Game 6.

“Leading 3-0, especially 3-0, I would say [teams feel differently]”, Rivers said. “A lot of teams don’t win these games. The Celtics are the only ones to have won this game [in the first round of this year’s playoffs]. Everyone else lost that game.

From a training perspective, you hate it, because you’re like, “Let’s take care of it. Then you get to Game 5 the other night and they played the other team’s attention better.

“If you don’t have that, then we’re all in trouble.”

When asked what it would take for things to go differently in Game 6, Rivers pointed to the pace at which the 76ers played — especially offensively — in the first two games and said Philadelphia will have to come back if she wants. shut down Toronto and avoid coming back for a Game 7 do-or-die on Saturday night.

“Well, I still think the No. 1 thing is 63% of the time we got the ball out of bounds last game,” Rivers said. “So that means 37% of the time you just get the ball back after a field goal or a free throw or something. So clearly it has to be better.

“We have to make more saves, because they don’t run…they run when they can, but when they don’t they use the 22-second clock. So the game is a game at slow pace and a half court game So the two things: #1 we need to get more saves #2 when we get saves and even on the scores we need to play at a better pace in the field.