Getty Sixers head coach Doc Rivers isn't losing sleep on a 29-point loss to Brooklyn in March.
Doc Rivers won’t be swapping basketball sweats for a postal uniform anytime soon. The Philadelphia 76ers coach doesn’t believe in sending messages. Or receiving them for that matter.
After Thursday’s 129-100 loss, Rivers wasn’t ready to crown the Brooklyn Nets the winners of the James Harden-for-Ben Simmons swap. Yes, the Sixers suffered a brutally tough defeat on their home floor in a game they were never in. That doesn’t mean the season is lost. For one night in early March, the Nets were the better team.
“Everybody struggled. The whole team struggled. I struggled,” Rivers said. “Everybody wanted to win the game but we didn’t understand that you have to play together to win the game, so that’s a great lesson.”
Brooklyn bullied Philadelphia for 48 minutes of pure hell, with the Devil himself (Ben Simmons) grinning on the visitor’s bench. The Nets got to every loose ball and every long rebound. It was a clinic in physicality. When a reporter asked Rivers if he thought Brooklyn was sending a message, he scoffed. Not a chance.
“No. If it was, it wasn’t delivered,” Rivers said. “What does that mean? That means nothing. But I would say this, they [Brooklyn] did say that that are the more physical team right now. Just by the way they played. I don’t know if that’s a message but that was a fact tonight and we have to come to grips with that.”
Doc Rivers taking about the loss … #Sixers #Nets #HereTheyCome
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Don’t Blame the Circus Atmosphere Around Simmons
The Wells Fargo Center was transformed into a three-ring circus, complete with an acrobatic halftime performance from Pei Pei. Simmons was the ringleader, not by choice. And the Sixers kept falling off the trapeze.
“They blew up simple dribble handoffs that we ran,” Rivers said. “Just simple, they ran through us, they were just so much more athletic and physical than we were the entire night.”
KD: “It was very quiet towards the end. We ain’t hear no more Ben Simmons chants from the Sixers fans. It was more Nets fans in here than anything.”
(via @NBAonTNT)
Most of the Philly faithful slinked out of the stadium before the score went final. Rivers pulled his starters early in the fourth quarter, giving way to MVP chants for Kevin Durant from Nets fans who made the short trip down from Brooklyn. The atmosphere was “louder, crazy, good” and didn’t impact the game at all, according to Rivers.
“I kept saying it, I wasn’t worried about the atmosphere,” Rivers said. “Ben is on the other team, the visiting team. If Ben wasn’t there, would we have booed the Nets tonight? Yeah, they’re the visiting team, that’s what you do. He’s a visitor, you boo the visitors, where else do they go?
“The same thing’s going to happen when we go on the road. But what you want to do is play well at home and have your crowd cheering for you. We didn’t play well enough to get that done tonight. That’s what we missed tonight and that was on us.”
Nets Played Together, Defended Simmons’ Honor
No one ever wins in a messy breakup, right? It’s a war of attrition usually lost by the most jilted lover. That was Simmons. And his new teammates had his back before, during, and after the onslaught.
“We just wanted to go out there and play for him and play well,” Nets guard Kyrie Irving said. “But again, it’s not an individual thing for us. We all felt it. We’re all there. We are feel that if you come at Ben, you come at us. You come at anyone else on our team, you come at all of us, and that’s the mentality.”
“When we played tonight, we definitely felt like Ben [Simmons] was on our heart, you could see it, he was wearing it, and we just wanted to go out there and play for him…. you come at Ben, you come at us. You come at anyone else on our team you come at all of us.”
-Kyrie Irving