Sixers: Why Doc Rivers may be the best thing to happen to Tobias Harris

Tobias Harris has bounced back after a rough season with the Sixers. His new (old) coach Doc Rivers may have made all the difference.

Disappointing. Overpaid. Worst contract in the NBA. These are all things normally whispered that Tobias Harris heard blared from the rooftops about himself all of last season with the Philadelphia 76ers. After the Sixers were handily beaten in the playoffs by the Boston Celtics in a four-game sweep, these opinions reached a fevered pitch.

Almost the instant the Sixers were eliminated, they cleaned house, firing Brett Brown and replacing him with Doc Rivers as head coach, and shaking up their basketball operations org chart by hiring Daryl Morey to the team. While most looked at Morey’s addition as the biggest piece of the puzzle, Rivers may have in fact been the most important.

The reason for this is that Tobias Harris did indeed have a disappointing season by his standards, and those standards were set during his time with Rivers and the LA Clippers. And it appears now that Rivers may be the key to unlocking Harris and returning him to the potent offensive weapon he was just a couple of years ago with the Clippers.

In his first full season with the Sixers last year, he shot just 36.7 percent from 3-point range, and in the final 27 games after getting traded to Philadelphia in 2018-19, he shot 32.6 percent. While for some players, these marks are reasonable, Harris’s claim to fame with the Clippers was a quick-fire, proficient 3-point shot. In the sluggish, discombobulated offense that Brett Brown’s Sixers ran, he couldn’t find a true role and he never got on track.

This season under Rivers, he’s had a throwback campaign more resembling his Clippers days. In the early days of 2020-21, Harris has been a flamethrower. He’s shooting 52.0 percent from the floor, 47.2 percent from 3-point range, averaging 19.3 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game, and now we’re developing a sample on which to rely.

In the 94 games Tobias Harris has played for Doc Rivers, he’s hit 199 of 463 attempts, shooting a 42.9 percent clip from 3.

As The Liberty Ballers’ Tom West lays out here, you can point to his decisiveness and the return of his quick decision-making as a major part of his uptick in efficiency.

Aside from quick and decisive thinking being a part of his game again, Harris and Ben Simmons are mutually benefitting from each other this season. Through seven games, Simmons has assisted on 19 Harris field goals (tied for second-most of any duo in the NBA), including nine of his 17 made 3s.

Being able to catch and shoot his 3-pointers is a huge advantage for Harris. While playing for Rivers in LA, he scored 1.265 points per possession on catch and shoot opportunities, and he got 4.6 possessions per game. Under Brett Brown last season, that rate plummeted to just 3.1 catch and shoot opportunities per game.

You don’t want to squander a lethal weapon in the NBA, and it certainly seems like that’s what Brett Brown did with Tobias Harris during his time in Philadelphia. Now that Doc Rivers is running the ship for the Sixers, it appears that he’s been repurposed in a more effective and useful way and having Ben Simmons to facilitate is a massive bonus that can only benefit them all this season.

It’s early, but Harris has been fantastic this season and is the reigning Eastern Conference Player of the Week. He needs to continue to produce, but all the indicators are there and the pieces are in place for him to be successful for the Sixers.