Doc Rivers, James Harden and the Problem with Pile-On Predictions

What happens when good narratives go bad?

Doc Rivers and James Harden’s intertwined history has another angle to it. (Harry How/Getty Images)

There’s a lot going on with new Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers right now, and it can be hard to keep track of it all.

Tom Ziller

(here) and

Ethan Strauss

(here) do a good job of unpacking the recent media drama around Rivers, which included:

• Rivers possibly backstabbing former Bucks coach Adrian Griffin (then denying it)

• Rivers throwing his Bucks players under the bus after their latest loss

• Rivers taking credit for James Harden’s success as a Clipper

• Former Rivers player J.J. Redick calling his old coach out for excuse-making

• Former Redick teammates¹ Pat Beverley and Austin Rivers (son of Doc) calling Redick out for calling Rivers out

• Redick complaining that his hot Rivers take was amplified more than his smart basketball content

• …and probably some other developments I’m forgetting as well.
  

Strauss’ podcast guest, sports-talk radio impresario Spike Eskin, had an interesting take — that Redick felt comfortable slamming Rivers because he likes to take cues from the wider internet discourse, which has also turned progressively more hostile toward Rivers (not least because of the many, many blown 3-1 leads and Game 7 losses). This Mike Prada stat pretty much says it all when it comes to what Rivers’ legacy is within the online NBA fandom:

Combine that with the way he replaced Griffin — whose record was abnormally good for a fired coach — and the Bucks’ bad start under Rivers (they’re 3-7 since he took over as coach), and the Rivers pile-on has been more of a landslide.

However, I can’t help but think back just a few months to another pile-on that hasn’t actually aged well at all in retrospect. When Harden forced his way off the 76ers (where Rivers had coached him in 2021-22 and 2022-23) and onto the Clippers in early November, the same discourse machine got fired up with the same vitriol — and the same schadenfreude when Los Angeles went an identical 3-7 in their first 10 games after the trade.

We had commentators openly ranting on air about Harden being a problem everywhere he went. Bill Simmons called it a dumb, embarrassing trade. For my part, I wasn’t sure the fit made sense based on Harden’s preferred playing style. The online fandom didn’t like Harden, and it didn’t need much excuse to start the collective pile-on. The 3-7 start seemed to validate everything they already believed.

Ever since, though, the Clippers are 30-10. Only the Celtics (32-8) have a better record. Harden has thrived in L.A., with a +3.9 Estimated RAPTOR rating in 49 games with his new team. He actually hasn’t missed a single game since the day after the trade. The pile-on might get its ultimate revenge in the playoffs, because these are the Clippers and they tend not to have nice things come springtime, but that’s sort of the refuge of last resort for those negative November takes.

You might say they should have been right. Right now, they all look pretty wrong.

Does this mean the Bucks will promptly win 77% of their games under Rivers from here on out? Well, they were at 71% last year, and at 70% earlier this year under Griffin. They have two of the NBA’s biggest stars in Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, along with other good complementary players like Khris Middleton and Malik Beasley. They’re probably due for some positive regression soon, regardless of what we think of Rivers as a coach.

But the main lesson is that these sorts of pile-ons can easily end up wrong, despite all signs pointing to them being right.

When we already don’t like a particular player or coach, confirmation bias can make us come down even harder on them if they struggle. We might even like to think Harden or Rivers were getting karmic retribution for the way they got to their current teams. But there’s every chance Rivers and the Bucks will win a lot of games soon enough, despite the intense, internet-approved narrative satisfaction of seeing him fail early on.

---

Filed under: NBA

1. Correction: Originally, I had written that Beverley was a teammate of Redick’s, but they never overlapped with the Clippers. (Redick left L.A. after the 2016-17 season, and Beverley joined before the 2017-18 season.)