On Intellectual Humility
Thankfully, Sixers Head Coach Doc (Glenn) Rivers provided just that in his post-game press conference on Sunday. Unfortunately, it was for all the wrong reasons.
For those who do not spend their free time following a team that perennially disappoints them, Doc has been a head coach in the NBA for 22 seasons with four different teams. He also had a playing career that lasted over a decade.
Doc’s accomplishments include winning 1 Coach of the Year Award in 2000 and an NBA Championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008. Earlier this year, he was included in the NBA’s 15 greatest coaches of all time.
On the flip side, with the exception of two seasons, Doc’s teams have never made it out of the second round of the playoffs. He has blown three 3-1 series leads1, including one in his final season as coach of the Clippers in which his team blew leads in separate closeout games of 15 and 19 points.
Last year, as coach of the Sixers, his team lost as a 1-seed to 5-seed Atlanta, losing 3 games at home and squandering two games in which they were up, respectively, by 18 and 26 points.
Doc Rivers’ record is far from infallible. However, what irks me—and a lot of other Sixers fans—is his inability to reflect on and learn from past failures or find culpability in his decisions.
When asked what he could learn from two straight postseasons in which his Clippers and Sixers teams gave away series leads, he said:
“That we lost, and we want to win.”
He also questioned the validity of the reporter’s question and tried to frame the past season as a positive:
“If it was the same team, I would actually justify that question… this team got swept in the first round [the year prior]. We had a chance to go to the Eastern finals. I’m not going to make this into a negative year.”
Since Doc is incapable of reflecting on his role in his teams’ shortcomings, I’ll allow this SB Nation writer to explain:
“Where Rivers occasionally falls short is in making mid-series adjustments in the playoffs. Some coaches prefer to stick the game plan they tried to perfect all year and trust their team will eventually win with their bread-and-butter strategy. Rivers fits under that category.”
Nikola Jokic, who was on the other side of the Clippers blown series, said:
“They didn't try to change anything about guarding us. When it was 3-3, we knew it was over for them.”
One of the lack of adjustments that reportedly cost Rivers his job in LA was his insistence on playing Montrezl Harrell, an under-sized Power Forward who had a good regular season but who consistently lost minutes against Jokic in the series.
Fast-forward to today and the same problem is plaguing Doc. Since the Sixers acquired veteran big Deandre Jordan, Rivers has handed him the back-up minutes, despite the fact that the team is outscored by over 13 points per 100 possessions when Jordan is on the court.
Jordan is 33 years old. He is a shell of the player he used to be and even his effort is suspect at times. There is a reason multiple contenders have given up on him in the past few seasons.
The alternative is Paul Reed—a second-year, high-energy big man from DePaul who won G-League MVP last year and has shown flashes as a capable role player. Reed has been riding the bench since Jordan was acquired, receiving only DNPs or garbage time minutes.
However, in the last 3 games of the regular season, Rivers has finally given Reed a chance. After a dominant performance by Reed in Sunday’s game, Rivers was asked by beat reporter Derek Bodner if he regretted not turning to Paul sooner to get him more experience heading into the playoffs.
The supercut of Doc’s confrontational response can be found here.
In it, Doc questions Bodner’s ability to evaluate basketball, saying: “We have a whole coaching staff, who—I’m just going to guess—knows a little bit more and they watch every game. They watch every practice…I’ve been around a long time. Trust that.”
On the matrix of conviction vs knowledge, I would put Doc squarely in what Tim Urban refers to as the Arrogant Zone:
Doc’s arrogance is based on his years of experience as a coach and the accolades he has earned along the way. He has reached a point where he does not feel criticism of his decision-making is justified, as exemplified by his response to a question posed to him in a post-game press conference earlier this year.
When asked what role coaching played in the Sixers blowing a 20+ point lead that night, Doc responded:
“Would you ask Pop2 that question? No, you wouldn't. So don't ask me that question…I’ve earned that.”
As the proverb goes, “The man who believes he knows everything learns nothing.”
Author William Deresiewicz calls the habit of reflection “the capacity for change.”
The Sixers, as an organization, used to prize intellectual humility. GM Sam Hinkie once said about it, “We hire for this aggressively. We celebrate this internally. And we’ve been known to punish when we find it woefully lacking.”
As a piece of advice for improving one’s humility, Sam suggested using a decision journal to keep track of decisions and reasoning and refer back to it later.
I do not see Doc changing who he is any time soon, which has me more down about this team’s chances in the postseason than in years prior.
You only get so many chances to learn from your mistakes. If Doc’s intellectual humility continues to be so woefully lacking, I hope ownership recognizes it and takes the appropriate action this offseason.
1 In the NBA, playoff series are played best-of-7↩
2 Hall of Fame Head Coach Gregg Popovich↩
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