Even after trading for James Harden, the Philadelphia 76ers may not be done shaking things up.
According to a new report, there are rumblings that Philly GM Daryl Morey might let Mike D’Antoni take over for head coach Doc Rivers, whose job performance has been questioned since leaving the Clippers in 2020.
Rivers might have a more significant problem to manage than merely tuning out the naysayers questioning his presence on the Top 15 list. The conspiracy theory already making the rounds in league coaching circles holds that Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey will eventually want Mike D’Antoni to take over in the hot seat for Philadelphia’s new Joel Embiid/James Harden tag team after D’Antoni’s offensive creativity helped catapult Harden to three scoring titles in Houston. Rivers certainly must factor into this season’s Coach of the Year balloting for his role in keeping the Sixers in contention for the East’s top seed throughout the Ben Simmons saga, but the pressure on him hasn’t exactly waned with an Embiid/Harden partnership to sort out and critics prone to reference his three blown 3-1 leads in the playoffs and four home losses in Game 7s far more often than the championship he won coaching the 2007-08 Celtics.
The hiring of D’Antoni would be a reunion of sorts in Philadelphia. Years ago, Harden, Morey, and D’Anoni led the Houston Rockets to a place of prominence in the West, giving the Warriors a run for their money several times through the years.
One by one, each of the three left the franchise and nobody would have imagined they’d ever reunite.
With the Sixers, D’Antoni could use his offensive schemes to bring out the best in James Harden, who has not looked like himself all season.
With Joel Embiid and the rest of the core, it could be the final piece Philly needs to come out of the East. At this point, all we can do is wait and see how it all unfolds.
