Doc Rivers came to make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship-winning squad after years of playoff disappointments had rued the franchise in previous seasons. In his first season as head coach, the 76ers were the #1 seed in the East and were looking like locks to make the Eastern Conference Finals and face either the Milwaukee Bucks or the Brooklyn Nets.
The dream ended with a shock loss in the second round as the Atlanta Hawks stunned the favorites to go on to face the Bucks in the ECF. After Philly’s Game 7 loss, Doc Rivers made some controversial comments about Ben Simmons not being a ‘championship-quality point guard’ that Ben allegedly found offensive, requesting a trade soon after.
Rivers revealed on The Vince Carter Show that Simmons didn’t leave because of Rivers as the problems that Ben felt had been festering since before Doc joined the squad.
“That one comment [made after the Game 7 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the 2021 Eastern Conference Semifinals] had nothing to do with why Ben wanted to leave. Let me just say that. It was a lot of things—as Ben told me, and publicly now—that happened long before I got there.”
Rivers went on to reveal his frustrations at the reasoning that Simmons gave him and believed Simmons should have worked his issues out instead of leaving the 76ers.
“What frustrated me was that I still think it shouldn’t have been enough to want to leave. I just didn’t. I told Ben that. I kept telling him that. ‘This is not why you want to leave the team. You work these things out.’ They didn’t get worked out.”
It’s unfortunate that Rivers never got to see out a second season with the Simmons-Embiid duo. Considering Philly got James Harden for Simmons, he may not be lamenting that trade heading into the 2022-23 season as the 76ers can focus on winning a championship from day 1.
