Philadelphia 76ers: 5 takeaways from Doc Rivers’ first press conference

2. Not lost in the minutiae

When asked specifically about Ben Simmons’ position and his reluctance to shoot 3s, Rivers’ answer was straight forward. He’s not going to get lost in the “minutiae” — the arbitrary assignment of positions, frankly, does not matter.

Rivers has led some of the NBA’s most prolific offenses over the course of his 20 years in the league. He does not care how the Sixers score, only that they score. He noted that Embiid and Simmons have won 65 percent of their games together. That duo works, no matter how strongly the narrative tells us otherwise.

"“I don’t get lost in what position guys play, I look at how many points we score as a team. I don’t care how we score. My teams have always been very good offensively, in the top five overall, and we score points. We score points in a lot of different ways.”"

This is the correct approach. Simmons does not need to be pigeonholed into a position. Rivers went on to say he wants to Sixers to rank in the top 10 offensively, and that in the absence of shooting, the Sixers will need to create advantages in other areas — movement, speed, creativity.

He is aware Philadelphia cannot continue to run the same system and expect different results, a common criticism of his predecessor Brett Brown. While Rivers’ inability to adjust has been a problem in the past, it’s clear he has a very different vision for how the Sixers will look offensively.