The Philadelphia 76ers looked well on their way to a resounding win over the Brooklyn Nets during their home opener. But the game slowly shifted the other way in the fourth quarter as Kevin Durant's Nets slowly chipped away at the Sixers' lead.
The Sixers were holding onto a precarious 2-point lead with just over a minute remaining in the game when Kevin Durant rammed into Danny Green in transition. The play was ruled a blocking foul but evidently looked like it could have been a charge.
Doc Rivers doesn't use his challenge for some reason on this foul despite having 2 timeouts pic.twitter.com/svkDboEXHc
— hoops bot (@hoops_bot) October 23, 2021
Sixers fans were perplexed over Doc Rivers' reluctance to challenge the call, given the fact he still had both of his final timeouts remaining. The worst case scenario would be that you would lose the call and the timeout, but it's more than worth the risk.
Doc Rivers is literally the worst coach in the league man how do you not challenge that
— Hoops Reference (@HoopsReference) October 23, 2021
https://twitter.com/KaiDPark/status/1451730316872257539
Doc Rivers refusing to challenge two consecutive calls that had a huge chance of going their way… lmao
— Joe Viray (@JoeVirayNBA) October 23, 2021
Sixers collapse and don’t score a bucket for the last 5 minutes of the game. Doc Rivers showed once again he’s a bottom 10 coach in the NBA when he was unwilling to use his challenge twice in the final minutes. Same shit new season. pic.twitter.com/PpKYgJmKON
— Mismatch Philadelphia (@MismatchPhilly) October 23, 2021
The Nets ended up scoring an and-1 courtesy of LaMarcus Aldridge who went off on the Sixers in that final frame.
Doc Rivers tried to explain the reasoning behind not challenging on the play, which was basically that the guy in charge of making those decisions ruled against it.
“We have a guy behind our bench that looks at them,” said the Sixers coach. “He had his thumbs down on all of them.”
Given that the moment was literally a game-deciding play, it might have been worth overruling whoever was in charge at that point. Hopefully Doc Rivers is a little less stingy on challenges in the future after this one.
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