Sixers coach Doc Rivers wants Seth Curry to shoot more. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Doc Rivers says that there is something he is always getting on Seth Curry about. Rivers would like his son-in-law to let it rip more often.

Curry returned from a three-game absence caused by a sprained left ankle to score 19 points in Thursday’s 109-101 win over the Los Angeles Lakers at the Staples Center. He gave the Sixers a huge lift because of his ability to stretch a defense with his shooting. Curry shot 7-for-13, including 4-for-8 from three-point range, a season high for three-point attempts.

This season, Curry is averaging career highs in field-goal attempts (10.1 per game) and scoring (13.1). He is shooting 43.6% from three-point range.

And yet Rivers is looking for more.

“Keep writing it [that Curry is passing up too many shots] and tell him,” Rivers said after the win over the Lakers. “It is clearly what we say, that he hasn’t listened to on that one.”

Rivers says he has had some lighthearted conversations with Curry about taking more shots.

“We joke about it, I tell him all the time if I had that cannon, my gosh, coaches would have told me to stop shooting, not to shoot,” said Rivers, who was a career 32.8% three-point shooter in 13 NBA seasons.

Curry is a 44.2% career three-point shooter, which puts him second in NBA history behind Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr (45.4%), according to Basketball-reference.com. That is even ahead of his older brother Stephen Curry (43.3%), Golden State’s seven-time All-Star and two-time MVP.

Seth Curry doesn’t like to force shots. Thus the modest shot total.

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“I try to make the right play and feel I can score from all three levels, shooting the three, mid-range floater and getting to the rim,” Curry said. “I don’t try to put myself as one-dimensional shooting threes.”

That said, 47.7% of Curry’s shots this season have come from three-point range.

According to Basketball-reference.com, he is shooting 62.5% at the rim, 48.7% from 3 to 9 feet; 52.9% from 10-15 feet; and 41.9% from 16 feet up to three-point range.

“I try to make the right play every time down, whether it is my shot or finding a shot for a teammate,” Curry said. “And that is why I have been efficient over my career, because I don’t come down thinking I have to get up a three here. I think about scoring the ball. A score is a score, whether it is a two or three, whatever it is.”

Besides the previous three games, Curry has also missed two others with left ankle soreness. (He also missed six after testing positive for COVID-19.) As far as his ankle was concerned, Curry said things went as well as expected.

“I felt solid early on, it kind of got sore on me as the game went along, but it felt pretty good,” he said.

Rivers was more than happy with the production.

“We didn’t know he was going to play until about an hour before game time, [but] I felt he was,” Rivers said. “You just don’t know what you are going to get when guys are out, and he was huge for us.”

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The Sixers (32-13) will stay in Los Angeles, playing Rivers’ former Clippers team on Saturday. The Clippers are 30-16 and have won four in a row. They’re ninth in the NBA in opponent three-point percentage, holding teams to 36.3%, just behind the No. 8 Sixers (36.2%).