The Sixers have narrowed the head coaching search down to two candidates, but Ty Lue is no longer one of those two.
The Sixers’ head coaching search is expected to wrap up soon, with Mike D’Antoni and the newly available Doc Rivers leading the hunt. With Rivers joining Sixers ownership on Wednesday night and D’Antoni the running favorite, Ty Lue has been virtually cast aside in the Sixers’ pursuit of a new head coach.
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Sixers have narrowed their focus to Rivers and D’Antoni, with a decision expected before the end of the week. While Lue has not been officially ruled out — there is no official tally, of course — he seems far more likely to end up in Los Angeles or New Orleans.
So far, Philadelphia’s coaching search has boiled down to “who’s the biggest name we can talk to?” While Rivers has earned his respect league-wide, it’s difficult to pinpoint why he would deserve the job over Ty Lue, unless the only qualification was time spent in the league. Rivers has coached for 20 years, yet he and Lue have the same number of championships.
Lue was an assistant under Rivers in Los Angeles last season, but it’s Rivers whose coaching decisions were detrimental in the Clippers’ second-round collapse. Poor rotation choices and an unwillingness to adjust allowed Denver to pull off three unanswered victories, including a dominant Game 7 in which L.A. faltered down the stretch.
Take it from our friends over at Clipperholics…
Great guy but he’ll get stuck in his ways and overplay certain guys. Right @HoudiniCeltics?
— Clipperholics (@ClipperholicsFS) October 1, 2020
Rivers is a wonderful human, a respected voice, and he brings decades of experience. He’s not a bad coach by any stretch. But neither was Brett Brown, and many of the criticisms common with Brown are equally common with Rivers, only more pronounced over a much longer resume.
Lue, on the other hand, is known as a tactical wizard who adjusts constantly and who built his reputation on holding stars accountable. It was Lue who kept LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love in check to the best of his abilities in Cleveland. Rivers, on the other hand, has now overseen multiple locker room fractures in Los Angeles.
The Sixers could do a heck of a lot worse than Doc Rivers. He is, after all, Doc Rivers. There’s a reason everyone knows his name. But he’s not the most exciting choice on paper, and if my preferences held any weight, the Sixers would focus firmly on D’Antoni and Lue, with Rivers a solid Plan C.