The Philadelphia 76ers have hired Nick Nurse, who led the Toronto Raptors to the 2019 NBA title, to replace the fired Doc Rivers as their coach. Rivers inherited a Philadelphia 76ers team that went 43-30 (.589 winning percentage) in the COVID-19 shortened 2019-20 season, and the 76ers posted a better record than that in each of his three seasons: 49-23 (.681) in 2021, 51-31 (.622) in 2022, and 54-28 (.659) in 2023. The 76ers lost in the second round of the playoffs in each of Rivers' three seasons, so Rivers--the 2000 NBA Coach of the Year who led the 2008 Boston Celtics to the NBA title--took the fall.
Nurse is an excellent coach, but it is not clear what he can do to cure the team's three main problems:
1) Joel Embiid's propensity to be injured and ineffective in the playoffs, which may be connected with the fact that he rarely seems to be in tip top physical condition.
2) James Harden's propensity to disappear in elimination games, which he did again in 2023 with nine points on 3-11 field goal shooting as the Boston Celtics routed the 76ers, 112-88. In that game Harden produced yet another "Harden"--he had more turnovers (five) than field goals made.
3) Philadelphia's President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey is delusional enough to assert that James Harden is a greater scorer than Michael Jordan, a stance that Morey has not renounced. Delusional thinking does not tend to lead to rational decisions. Morey has claimed for two decades that his use of "advanced basketball statistics" provides a tangible advantage, a claim that is belied by his record in Houston and Philadelphia.
The main image/sound bite that I will remember from Rivers' Philadelphia tenure is his annual sideline pleas to his team during playoff timeouts to play hard, a plea that fell on deaf ears. Are we supposed to believe that when Nurse begs Embiid, Harden, and company to play hard the players will comply?
The 76ers are built on a faulty foundation of tanking despite the reality that tanking does not work. A large body of evidence indicates that a team run by Daryl Morey that relies on Joel Embiid and James Harden will max out by losing in the second round, and there is no reason to believe that Nurse will change that.