Sorry, Doc: Sixers need a change of direction after Game 7 meltdown

BOSTON — Well, at least we know where the Sixers need to go from here.

To Wimbledon!

Just kidding.

They need to go into hiding.

James Harden, Joel Embiid, Doc Rivers — put on your biggest pair of sunglasses and pull your hats down low. The best thing you can do is disappear for awhile. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.

This wasn’t a loss. It was an embarrassment. A disaster. The kind of thing that leaves you wondering if anything really matters. I don’t mean the coach and the roster. I mean life in general.

The final score didn’t matter. Not by the end of the third quarter. It went in the books as Celtics 112, Sixers 88. But only because time ran out.

How bad was Game 7? There was a moment late in the third quarter when a tie game had turned into a 15-point Celtics lead and you looked around and realized that the entire arena was standing. At first, you chalked it up to excitement. The crowd had just watched Jayson Tatum score 12 straight points while sending the Sixers into a full-blown panic. He was on his way to setting a Game 7 record with 51 points.

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid, James Harden choke in a gutless showing in Boston. ‘The Process’ fails again.

This wasn’t a performance that you could watch while sitting.

But the people kept on standing. The 15-point lead turned to 18. The 18-point lead turned to 21. The realization hit you. They weren’t cheering. They were gawking.

“Once a scorer like that gets going,” Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey said, “it’s hard to stop them.”

On any normal Mother’s Day, it would have been doubly impolite to stare. But anybody who knows the Sixers knows that sometimes you can’t help it. Every time you think you’ve seen it all, they smile and wag a finger. What if we lose another Game 7? That’s not the question. What if we lose it in the ugliest way imaginable?

This may not have been it, but it was close. Embiid and Harden combined to miss 21 of the 29 shots they attempted. Between them, they scored 24 points. Tatum himself had 25 at halftime. With that kind of production from your top two stars, it doesn’t matter what everybody else does. Which is good. Because nobody else did anything either.

This wasn’t a loss. It was a public meltdown. The Sixers went from a basketball team that was a win away from the conference finals to an overturned tractor-trailer spilling office products across the road. They didn’t just get beaten. They got rubbernecked.

“That’s the best team in the league,” Embiid said after the game. “They’re pretty good.”

That’s the truth. Problem is, the Celtics aren’t going anywhere. They have been playing together for six years and it could easily be six more. While the Sixers were scrambling to reinvent themselves every two years, the Celtics were steadily building themselves into a tough, cohesive team. Now, they’re four wins away from their second straight NBA Finals, and they could easily win it all.

It’s a conundrum, and not an easy one to unpack before the recency bias wears off. Right now, the Sixers look like a team that got to Game 7 mostly because of the ambivalence of their opponent. Harden hoarded his magic beans for a couple of games. Tatum had his when it mattered. The Celtics led Game 1 with 26 seconds left while shooting 60% from the field. That’s how close the Sixers were to being down 3-0.

Question is, how will things look once our objective capabilities return?

It probably won’t be good news for Rivers. In fact, there’s no probably about it. At this point, it’s self-evidential. In each of their four losses in this series, the Sixers looked like a team that desperately needed a fresh perspective. The lack of ball movement, the uncertainty of some of his players, the overreliance on Harden and Embiid to make something — anything! — happen. If the Sixers are even thinking about keeping that tandem intact, they need some fresh ideas on how to best deploy it.

Rivers deserves plenty of credit for guiding the Sixers through a tumultuous few seasons while keeping them in contention. You can argue that each of his three stars — Embiid, Harden, Tyrese Maxey — improved on his watch. At the same time, the collective result remained the same.

» READ MORE: Another heartbreak for Philly: Sixers fans react to Game 7 season-ending loss against the Celtics

Harden may have told us everything that needed to be said with his pointed non-endorsement of Rivers in the locker room. A reporter had asked him a two-part question: 1) How is your relationship with Doc? 2) Do you think he should return as coach?

“Our relationship is OK,” Harden said, and left it at that.

Alrighty then.

As for Rivers, he’s never been shy about making a case for himself. He’s done it throughout this series, with various degrees of subtly. On Sunday, he did it again.

“It’s funny,” the coach said. “I look out, and I talk about keeping receipts sometimes, you know what I mean? I don’t think one person in this room picked the Sixers. Not one. But we did. And we chose to believe that we could win anyway, and we almost pulled it off.”

That might be the title of his memoirs here.

We almost pulled it off.

If the Sixers run it back, they need somebody who can figure out a way to run it back differently. If Harden can’t consistently finish in the paint or get his step-back off against a Celtics-caliber defense, the Sixers need a coach who can dream up a way to work around that. He can’t have the ball in his hands for the first or last 10 seconds of a shot clock if he can’t create and make shots for himself.

Obviously, that’s contingent on Harden understanding and accepting it. But he’s going to have to do that anywhere he goes. Do the Rockets really want to expose their young, impressionable team to the guy they saw at TD Garden on Sunday?

At this point, the marriage between Harden and the Sixers is one of shared exclusion. They’re each other’s only choice. If the Sixers don’t sign Harden, they’ll still be over the cap, so they can’t spend that money elsewhere. He’s a maddening player — always has been to a certain degree. But they are clearly better with him than without him. The best hope is that a different coach will have a better idea of how to maximize that.

» READ MORE: Jayson Tatum was the Celtics’ savior ... and the Sixers’ worst nightmare

Same goes for Embiid. He is too talented a player for his seasons to end this way forever. Part of it is on him. Step one is to find whatever it was inside Tatum from the fourth quarter of Game 6 through the end of Game 7. It was inside of Giannis Antetokounmpo when he scored 50 points in the Bucks’ title-clinching win over the Suns two years ago. It was inside of Nikola Jokić last week with 32 points and 12 assists in the Nuggets’ Game 6 clincher. It’s been inside of guys like Steph Curry and LeBron James countless times throughout their careers. The thing that Tatum did on Sunday is what MVPs do.

“I’ve already starting figuring out how I need to get better next year, what was missing this year,” Embiid said after the loss on Sunday. “I think I have a pretty good view of what I need to do to be a better basketball player, keep improving every single year, which I’ve done. To me, I look at it, it’s a step, like somebody said, it’s not a failure, it’s a step to success.”

But he also needs help. If Embiid’s No. 1 goal this offseason is to improve his ability to score against a Celtics-caliber defense, the Sixers’ No. 1 goal is to do everything in their power to help him get to that point.

Let the spirit quest begin.