Doc Rivers understands Sixers’ struggles without Joel Embiid: ‘It’s just hard’

MILWAUKEE — Doc Rivers politely scoffed at the question about watching another injury-plagued season for Joel Embiid unfold from afar.

“It’s been easy for me,” said Rivers, the former 76ers coach who now leads the Bucks. “I’m here. Honestly, I’ve had no issues with it at all.”

So Rivers does not exactly sympathize with his former employer. But he does understand the challenge.

» READ MORE: Bucks pull away in fourth quarter to hand Sixers their sixth consecutive loss, 123-109

Rivers spent three seasons navigating the NBA gantlet peppered with Embiid health issues. On the surface, Rivers’ successor, Nick Nurse, has not quite cracked the code on how to consistently win when the 2023 NBA Most Valuable Player is sidelined, this time with knee swelling following a workout earlier this week. Nurse, though, concurred with the preface to a question Sunday that it is “a little bit unfair” to fully evaluate, because of the multitude of other injuries and lineup shuffling derailing the Sixers during a mostly dreadful first half of the 2024-25 season.

Yet because of Embiid’s unique blend of power and skill, Rivers believes that forces teammates and coaches to play and scheme “completely different” without him.

“And that’s hard,” Rivers added before the Bucks beat the Sixers, 123-109, on Sunday night at Fiserv Forum. “We had to marry ourselves to doing that. That is not what you really want to do. You don’t want to have two offenses.

“But we decided, because he was in and out, we just had to do it.”

Embiid has played in only 13 of the Sixers’ 41 games this season because of an ongoing knee problem following meniscus surgery nearly a year ago, plus a sprained foot, a sinus fracture, and a suspension. His team is a modest 7-6 when he steps on the floor, and a miserable 8-20 when he does not — including a six-game losing skid entering Tuesday’s matchup in Denver against the Nuggets. On Friday, the team said Embiid’s knee would be reevaluated in seven to 10 days.

Worth emphasizing: It is normal for a team to sputter when its franchise player misses significant swaths of games. Outsiders could counter with teams such as the Orlando Magic, who are 23-21 despite missing Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner for big stretches, and the Los Angeles Clippers, who are 24-17 with Kawhi Leonard playing in only four games. But describing Embiid’s impact as a two-time NBA scoring leader, improved playmaker, and interior defensive anchor as immense is still an understatement. He was on pace for a historic season before surgery last February, averaging more points (36) than minutes played (34.2) in 33 games.

» READ MORE: Sixers ‘in survival mode’ as they near the midway point of a disastrous, injury-riddled season

That’s why Rivers acknowledged it “took a minute” to determine how to approach those non-Embiid games during the coach’s first season, in 2020-21, when the Sixers went 10-11. That mark evolved from 6-8 in 2021-22 to 11-5 in 2022-23. Though that can partially be attributed to Tyrese Maxey’s ascension and the Sixers’ trade for James Harden, this period also overlapped with the Ben Simmons saga.

During that time, the Sixers had built an efficient offense around moving Embiid from deeper in the post to the free-throw line and elbow area. There, it is more difficult for defenses to send double teams, giving Embiid space with the ball in his hands to take off-the-dribble shots and find passing lanes to teammates. When Embiid did not play, Rivers said, the Sixers “kind of found our pace” by utilizing an ascending Maxey’s blazing speed.

Last season, when Embiid missed two months following knee surgery, the Sixers fell from third place in the Eastern Conference standings to seventh and then lost to the New York Knicks in the first round of the playoffs. When Daryl Morey was asked during his end-of-season news conference about how to balance building a roster that could complement Embiid and win enough games when the superstar is sidelined, the team’s president of basketball operations said that “it can’t be a big focus, how we play without him.”

“We know that team [without Embiid] can’t win a championship,” Morey said then. “It’s really, how do we manage through it better? I felt like, on me, the depth wasn’t quite there when he was out to win at the level we wanted to win at.

“We spend most of our time with how to win when Joel is here. I think that’s the right thing.”

The addition of Paul George was theoretically supposed to help mitigate some of those issues by putting at least two All-Stars on the court for the majority of games. Yet the 34-year-old George has missed 13 games with a variety of health issues, and when he has played, the offensive fit alongside Maxey has been surprisingly clunky.

» READ MORE: Sielski: We’ve seen the best of the Sixers with Joel Embiid. What a mess. What a shame.

Instead, the Sixers’ attack has primarily been Maxey and a constantly rotating supporting cast through the regular season’s first 41 games. And this run, combined with the end of last season, indicates that, at least at this point of the 25-year-old Maxey’s career, he is an All-Star, an electric three-level scorer, a dynamite two-man partner for Embiid, and a max-contract player — but not a bona fide No. 1 scoring option for a contender. He is averaging a career-high 26.4 points, including a 37-point outburst Sunday in Milwaukee, but his shooting numbers from the field (42.4%) and three-point range (33.4%) have dipped below his career averages.

Maxey said Saturday that the Sixers most miss the way Embiid “cleans up all our mistakes. … Sometimes, if we don’t have a play, we can throw it in to him and he’ll bail us out. Sometimes, if we get blown by on defense, he’ll go up to block a shot.” The Sixers entered Monday ranked in the bottom 10 in the NBA in efficiency on offense (109.6 points per 100 possessions) and defense (113.9 points allowed per 100 possessions).

Yet Maxey and Nurse are encouraged by some foundational developments during a week of close losses, despite a severely depleted rotation.

Maxey echoed a focus on playing faster, to try to score before opposing defenses can get organized and so they do not need to run as many offensive sets. Maxey added that he feels the responsibility to better communicate with teammates on the fly when they come out of timeouts or when he is bringing the ball up the floor. Veteran wing Kelly Oubre Jr. added that the Sixers can still sharpen spacing and flow on that end of the floor.

Young players, such as rookies Adem Bona and Justin Edwards, are aiming to exercise a mindset of seizing this rare midseason opportunity, instead of being intimidated by legitimate NBA minutes. Nurse added there were “big chunks” of Sunday’s loss to the Bucks when effort and execution were strong on both ends of the floor.

“We’re just kind of [figuring] it out, day by day, right now,” Nurse said. “Until we can get some semblance of some regular lineups — a little bit of semblance.”

The Sixers hope that soon includes an Embiid return. But even when that occurs, history indicates he will continue to miss time periodically — or regularly. Which means concocting ways to win without him will remain an ongoing task.

That no longer matters to Rivers. He is not responsible for guiding a team through such a massive absence. But he can relate to the challenge.

“I’ve gone through it,” he said. “It’s hard to win without your best player. Or even when your best player plays, and he’s not healthy, it’s just hard. I’ve lived that life.”