Perhaps lost in the bombshell news of Daryl Morey signing on as president of basketball operations for the Sixers, Doc Rivers has come close to putting the finishing touches on his coaching staff. Joining Rivers in Philadelphia is a mix of people he worked with in Los Angeles and a couple of respected names he has never worked with.
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It’s too early to know how this staff will interact and how they will try to shape an ill-fitting Sixers roster that very well could be under construction in the coming weeks. But by looking at the backgrounds of the people Rivers has brought in, there are some clues.
We already wrote about Dave Joerger and Rivers’ past admiration for his tactical ability. Joerger has been an assistant in charge of top-notch defenses in Memphis. But he also has been the head coach of teams that played drastically different styles in terms of pace (Memphis, Sacramento), which seemingly would be helpful for the Sixers, a team whose best players are a post-up big man and a track star in the open court. But Joerger isn’t the only coach with a strong defensive background who will be on Rivers’ staff next season. The Sixers are also bringing Dan Burke on board after a long run in Indiana. The news was first reported by ESPN.
Burke, who is expected to be the Sixers de facto defensive coordinator under Rivers, has a unique résumé for a longtime assistant coach because he has been in the same spot for almost his entire career. In a league where assistant coaching movement is frequent as teams are quick to look for another voice to lead the locker room, Burke has been with the Pacers since 1997, when then-coach Larry Bird hired Burke and his mentor Dick Harter to serve on the staff. To provide some perspective on how long Burke has been in Indiana, the conference finals series that ended his first season there was recently featured on “The Last Dance.”
In the 23 years since Bird took over as head coach, Indiana has employed six head coaches and Burke has been on every staff. He is primarily known for one end of the floor, leading or helping with quality defenses even as the NBA game has rapidly changed. One of Burke’s more successful stretches was when Indiana made two consecutive conference finals under Frank Vogel in 2013 and 2014, as the Pacers led the NBA in defensive rating both seasons. The defensive talent and schemes change — Roy Hibbert went from an All-Defensive Team player to out of the league in short order because of the emergence of more five-out basketball — but Burke has been a constant. This year’s Pacers finished sixth in defensive rating, according to NBA.com, two spots ahead of the Sixers.
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Burke possesses plenty of tactical acumen developed through the years, but he also has a reputation as a straight shooter. He became well known in Indiana for giving critical assessments of the Pacers’ play during halftime television interviews. Of course, Sixers fans saw some of Burke’s personality last year: After their lone win of the season series against Indiana, a game in which Ben Simmons’ defense down the stretch proved to be the difference, Burke said, “I hate that team” and “Embiid gets away with a bunch of crap that the league ignores.” Never one to miss a chance to laugh, Embiid mentioned this on Twitter.
Because of Burke’s position running the defense and Embiid’s importance on that side of the floor, it will be a relationship to watch.
“Today’s coaches, most of them are scared to death of the players,” Bird said to NBA.com in 2016. “But Dan’s not. Dan tells them the right thing. He never tells them any bull. Sometimes they need to hear the truth. He don’t just yell at them to be yelling at them like a lot of people. When they’re wrong, he’ll tell them they’re wrong. And sometimes you get a little bit of talk-back. But at the end of the day, the players know he’s right. He tells them straightforward and they know it when they’re wrong, so it makes for a pretty good working relationship.”
With Burke on board, there seems to be a major commitment to improving a Sixers defense that almost certainly underachieved compared to its talent level last season.
Upon changing jobs, many NBA coaches will try to bring over people they’ve worked with. And in Rivers’ case, there will be a few former Clippers staffers in Philadelphia this year. The most notable is Sam Cassell, who has paid his dues as an assistant coach for a decade after a long, successful playing career. He is considered by many to be a future head coach and recently interviewed for the Clippers position that went to Ty Lue. Cassell was an assistant with Washington from 2009 until 2014 before joining Rivers’ staff in Los Angeles.
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(One other Sixers connection: Late in his playing career, Cassell led the Clippers to Game 7 of the second round in 2006. The best player on that team was Elton Brand.)
A crafty and high-IQ player during his career, you can expect that at least some of Cassell’s responsibilities will be to work with the Sixers’ guards. From John Wall and Bradley Beal in Washington to Chris Paul, Lou Williams and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Los Angeles, he has coached some good ones and been part of their development. But Cassell also is a strong voice on offensive game plans for the entire team, which means he will work closely with the offensive-minded head coach. And if the Sixers can turn things around in the next few seasons, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Cassell land a head coaching job.
Then there are the other Los Angeles hires on Rivers’ bench, as he continues to build out his staff: Brian Adams comes from the G League’s Agua Caliente Clippers, where he served as head coach the past few seasons. Adams has a history with Rivers, working for him in the video room in Boston before departing to be a college coach for a few years and then eventually returning to the NBA. He is expected to work closely with Burke in crafting the Sixers defense. Pete Dominguez also joins the Sixers in a coaching role after serving as the Clippers’ head video coordinator.
Eric Hughes, who worked with the Sixers last season, will return in a top player development position. And one other potential name to watch is Pacers assistant Popeye Jones.
Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, the Sixers have made wholesale changes in the front office and the coaching staff. For Rivers, his new staff seems to be planned with a mix of veteran knowledge from around the league and coaches who have familiarity with how he likes to run a program. Facing a potentially quick turnaround, the coaching staff is going to have to hit the ground running in what promises to be a strange upcoming season.
(Photo of Sam Cassell and Doc Rivers: Andrew D. Bernstein/ NBAE via Getty Images)
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