On a night when the Clippers, without Kawhi Leonard, beat the Jazz in Utah to take a 3-2 series lead, Doc Rivers’ top-seeded Sixers choked away Game 5 on the East Coast. A second-straight second half collapse, this time in front of a rabid and fantastic home crowd.

It was one of those storylines people brought up when the Sixers hired Rivers, the concerning track record of early Los Angeles playoff exits. Most recently, the 2020 Clippers exited the bubble in disappointing fashion after blowing a 3-1 series lead over the Nuggets, which led to Doc’s departure and some public finger pointing via Paul George and others. Doc’s assistant, Tyronn Lue, took over and now has his team one win away from the Western Conference Finals.

Last season was just a microcosm of a larger Doc issue that results in this statistic existing:

That’s rough sledding for a coach who was one of the best in the business just 10 years ago. He won a ring with Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen, then went to the Finals again two years later. He’s got 992 regular season wins, 97 playoff wins, and is going into the Hall of Fame when he decides to hang ’em up. I’d be absolutely stunned if Doc didn’t make it.

But you feel like his legacy is somewhat in question here, because of recency bias that is actually legitimate. Normally recency bias is just that – biased – but it’s hard to ignore the last ten years of postseason disappointment.

These are the shortcomings, which were compiled on Twitter and shared by a user named “Sir Nunya”

How do you live that down? If the #1 seed Sixers lose to the Hawks in six games, or fall at home in Game 7, then what? How much more does Doc’s stellar career become tarnished by another hideous early playoff exit?

It just feels to me like his legacy is somewhat on the line here. You’re never going to erase the amazing things he did with that Celtics team, but the narrative that “three Hall of Famers carried him to a ring” is going to echo louder. More young NBA fans will remember the playoff exits more than the playoff wins. It’s going to be more difficult for people to evaluate the totality of Doc’s career achievements as a player and a coach when the thing they are most familiar with is postseason choke jobs.

One of the things I found interesting was that Doc mentioned in his introductory press conference that he had considered taking a break from coaching after leaving the Clippers. Everybody feels burn out at some point, or needs a change of scenery, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder how much was left in the tank before the Sixers job became available. Rivers had been grinding for a long time and sometimes you need to step away for a moment and recalibrate. You benefit from hitting the figurative reset button.

This all sounds harsh, but it’s reality right now. Doc really needs this series, and the margin for error is zero. They literally cannot afford another loss. Ripping off a couple of wins to reach the Eastern Conference Finals will go a long way towards defeating that “early exits” narrative and preserving his coaching legacy.