Former 76ers coach Doc Rivers appeared on The Dan Patrick Show Wednesday and said that James Harden not being selected for the All Star Game changed his approach to the team for the worse.
Rivers said Harden was a “terrific player” for the first half of the 2022–23 season because he was “being a point guard,” referencing how Harden was facilitating and passing the ball, and wasn’t chasing numbers. Rivers even said a coach called him during the team’s impressive start to the year and said, “I never thought anyone could get him to do that.”
Harden has always been a high-volume shooter, but he started to regress back to his old ways as the season went on. Patrick outright asked Rivers what changed and he gave a blunt answer.
"Our relationship, it was an honest one. It's probably why I'm doing TV."
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) October 25, 2023
-Doc Rivers details his relationship with James Harden, and shares at what point things changed for James last season#brotherlylove pic.twitter.com/Jg0KpWy04T
“I would say not making the All-Star team really bothered him,” he said.
This is not the first time this possibility has been brought up, though. In September, ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne reported that Harden was upset he was not selected to the All-Star Game after 10-straight selections. Harden was upset because he sacrificed his typical first-option role with the 76ers in favor of eventual MVP Joel Embiid and took on more of a facilitator role.
He was so upset that when commissioner Adam Silver reached out to see if he was interested in being named an injury replacement, he didn’t answer for days because he was “pouting.” By the time Harden had said he would accept the invitation, Silver had already moved on and named Pascal Siakam as a replacement for Kevin Durant. Harden denied the report, however. He simply commented “lies” on ESPN’s Instagram post about the report.
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After not being selected, Rivers said Harden reached out to him.
“He would never say this, but in my gut, I thought it changed almost immediately,” Rivers continued. “I remember about a game or two after that, he called me and said, ‘Hey, I want to start playing with the second unit more.’ I knew exactly what that means: more shots. We had our ups and down from that point on.”
Philadelphia would go on to be eliminated in the second round of the playoffs for the third year in a row and as a result Rivers was fired. Harden has since demanded a trade and his status with the team remains up in the air.
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