Doc Rivers on Sixers' Struggles: 'We Can Be Better'

Doc Rivers on Sixers’ Struggles: ‘We Can Be Better’

The Sixers have lost two straight in their seven-game series vs. the Raptors and coach Doc Rivers believes that the team’s offense is part of the reason

“We can be better, I do think a lot of our shots were good but we also took a lot of forced, tough, running shots that we just can’t take so we will look at the film and we will figure it out,” Rivers told the media after the Game 5 loss.

Rivers added that the Raptors were simply more physical than the Sixers were on Monday night. Some of the players point to Toronto’s energy as reason for the loss.

“I don’t know the full answer to that but I still think it’s more execution wise than our game plan,” Tobias Harris said of not being able to match the Raptors energy. “It wasn’t to the best of our ability defensively, we gave up, we never brought the fight to them in the beginning of the game really, we didn’t match their physicality as well so from there we were playing catch-up the whole game but we really didn’t do a good enough job of stopping them, getting enough stops to get our momentum going on the offensive end and we didn’t do a great job of scoring the basketball and we didn’t help ourselves by getting out in transition more by getting some stops.”

Harris had 16 points in the 103-88 loss, trailing only Joel Embiid (20 points).

“To be honest with you this is a tough loss for us,” Harris continued. “A game that we wanted, we didn’t put enough effort in to get the W but we gotta stick together, we gotta figure out how we can gather that type of energy and be able to be at our best, we really just gotta focus on what’s worked for us through the series in the games that we have won and what has been successful and we have to just do more of that, we can’t get away from what has really worked during our three games that we have won and that’s just the motto for the next game, we gotta be better.”