Doc Rivers and the Sixers have run out of excuses for another playoff failure

Maybe the 76ers will saunter into Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Thursday night, thrash the Raptors to end this first-round series, and sneer as they tell everyone they told you so. But the display of defensiveness that Doc Rivers put on after practice Wednesday sure didn’t seem the act of a coach supremely confident in himself or his team. After taking a three-games-to-none lead in these Eastern Conference quarterfinals, the Sixers had four chances to finish off the Raptors. Now that margin of error has been cut in half, yet Rivers was insisting that those two losses, particularly that listless performance in Game 5, had no bearing on how the Sixers will play in Game 6.

“We don’t look at it like that,” he said. “We look at it game by game. We’re thinking about winning this game. No one does that. There’s no one in sports who’s done that. You worry about that game. That’s all you focus on.”

But Doc, there’s a difference between being up in a series 3-0 and being up 3-2.

“I know. I went to school and figured that one out. Having that said, it’s not a difference when the game starts.”

Really? Rivers’ own heavy history in such situations suggests that the Sixers face a hard task in closing out this series, and he bristled when someone brought up that past Wednesday. Three times in his career, one of Rivers’ teams has had a 3-1 lead and lost the series anyway, but he painted himself as largely a victim of bad luck and adverse conditions. “It’s easy to use me as an example,” he said, “but I wish you would all tell the whole story with me, all right?”

Funny, though. Those whole stories, in Rivers’ eyes, always ease the burden and blame on him. The 2002-03 Orlando Magic? “My Orlando team was the eighth seed,” he said. “No one gave us credit for being up against a Pistons team that won the title.” Of course no one did. Those Pistons didn’t win the NBA title. The 2004 Pistons did, after they’d added Rasheed Wallace. “I want you to go back and look at that [Orlando] roster,” Rivers said. “I dare you to look at that roster, and you would say, ‘What a hell of a coaching job.’ Really.” OK, here’s a challenge for Rivers in return: Stand in front of Tracy McGrady, Darrell Armstrong, Pat Garrity, and the other members of that Magic team and tell them to their faces that you coached wonderfully but they either played terribly or weren’t good enough to begin with. Go ahead, Doc. Dare ya.

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The 2015 Clippers? Chris Paul missed the first two games of that Western Conference semifinal against the Rockets. “Then he was playing on one leg,” Rivers said. The 2020 Clippers, who lost to the Nuggets in the first round? “That’s the one where we blew that.” How big of him to admit. But he went only so far. “That was in the bubble,” Rivers said, “and anything can happen in the bubble. Game 7 would have been in L.A. But it just happens. With me, I would say I’ve got to do better always. I’ll take my own responsibility, and some of it is that circumstances happen.”

By those standards, it’s a wonder that Rivers didn’t bring up Ben Simmons and last year’s second-round meltdown against the Hawks, and it’s easy to envision the excuses that he’ll have at the ready should the Sixers lose Games 6 and 7, should they become the first NBA team to lose a series after leading it by three games. Joel Embiid had that torn ligament in his thumb. … James Harden is a shell of the player he once was and had a bad hamstring to boot. … Matisse Thybulle couldn’t be bothered to get vaccinated. ... It’s human nature to relax when you’re up three games to none, and we let a terrific team get back in the series when we should have crushed them. ...

With what he said Wednesday, Rivers did nothing to dissuade anyone from believing that these factors are already preying on his and the Sixers’ minds. It took Danny Green, who has three championship rings himself, to remind everyone — including his own coach – that the Raptors didn’t wrest away control of this series as much as the Sixers handed it over to them.

“You’ve got to have the appropriate fear, regardless of who you’re playing or how far you’re up,” Green said. “When you’re up big, you kind of get relaxed and comfortable. In this situation, in no way, shape, or form can you be comfortable or relaxed. We’ve got to come in a lot more focused for 48 minutes. We can’t expect things to just happen or be given to us, especially when it’s their building. …

“No choice now. Put up or fold.”

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That’s it. That’s everything for the Sixers. And that covers Rivers, too. Embiid is injured and Harden is aging and Tyrese Maxey and Tobias Harris aren’t quite capable of carrying a team every night, and no one will want to hear a word about any of those factors if the Wells Fargo Center is forced to open its doors for a Game 7 on Saturday night. From the Orlando Magic to the Orlando bubble, from the Clippers then to the Sixers now, circumstances are always conspiring against poor Doc Rivers, against a coach reluctant to acknowledge the pattern that, if he’s not careful, could come to define his career. No excuses. No rationalizations. No Ben Simmons to blame. Just one game to win. Just one of his players presenting it in the starkest of terms: Put up or fold.

So, what’s it gonna be, Doc?