The Sixers are going to the playoffs! Yay! Everybody get pumped for postseason with the head coach once again being a condescending dickhead to a local media member:

Couple of thoughts here, in no particular order:

  1. That’s Derek Bodner asking the question. Derek doesn’t ask a lot of questions, but when he does, they are always fair and reasonable.
  2. In this case, asking about Paul Reed not getting minutes earlier in the season is 100% legitimate, because the whole point of the regular season is to make sure you totally understand your bench and what you have available. Doc went into last year’s playoffs with a 10-man rotation and just sort of tried to find the hot hand each game, when he should have trimmed the group much earlier. In this case, you have the aging DeAndre Jordan and Paul Millsap eating up a lot of February/March/April minutes and a lot of fans and media don’t think we saw enough of Paul Reed and Charles Bassey to determine with authority whether or not they are ready for playoff basketball.
  3. Doc seems triggered by mere mention of the topic, which suggests to me that he’s not happy with the backup big situation in general. He was probably was hoping the buyout market could play out differently.
  4. Doc always has this condescending and dickish vibe with the media. Say what you will about Brett Brown, but at least with handled himself with class, even when you could tell he was annoyed. Rivers thinks the local media is one level above pond scum, and probably feels the same way about the fans.
  5. Doc has butted heads over the years with Austin Krell, Keith Pompey, myself, Dei Lynam, and now Derek Bodner. That’s not exactly a murderer’s row of unfair media. Imagine if Doc was on the Eagles beat and taking questions every other day from Jeff McLane and Les Bowen and all of those dudes. He’d last five seconds. The Sixers beat is a mostly benign collection of decent folks.
  6. Rivers’ answer may be perfectly reasonable and perfectly plausible! But it’s the way he delivers it that’s the problem. He says snarky shit like “for everybody who struggles” and “I’m gonna say it slow” and “do we all have that now?” Everything is so fucking patronizing with him.

All of Doc’s shit just adds more bad vibes to an already juiceless playoff entrance. Seriously, there is no juice for this team right now. You’ve got James Harden looking cooked, Matisse Thybulle ineligible to play in Canada, etc. Then along comes Doc to wrap up the season with more dickish comments to the media, and the entire Sixers ecosystem feels polluted. It needs to be flushed and reset. The PH levels are way off.

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