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Doc Rivers Refuses to Make Excuses After Shorthanded Sixers Lost to Grizzlies

Shorthanded or not, Sixers head coach Doc Rivers believes his team should've won Saturday night's game.

Nobody expected the 2020-2021 NBA season to be perfect. As the league decided to play in a global pandemic outside of the Orlando bubble, it was expected that teams would find themselves shorthanded at times due to COVID-19-related setbacks.

Three weeks into the season, the Philadelphia 76ers ended up in a tough spot as veteran guard Seth Curry tested positive for COVID two Thursdays ago. Curry's positive test caused a domino effect as it placed seven players on the injury report due to contact tracing.

And on top of COVID-related setbacks, the Sixers also have a couple of injuries to deal with as well. Basically, since the third game of the season, the 76ers haven't been fully healthy. While they were in a much better position this Saturday than last weekend in terms of health -- the team is still shorthanded.

On Saturday night, as the Sixers faced the Memphis Grizzlies on the road, the team missed a handful of players, including Furkan Korkmaz, Mike Scott, Vincent Poirier, Seth Curry, and the starting center, Joel Embiid.

Before Saturday night's matchup, the 76ers played two games without Embiid this season. Both times, the Sixers suffered losses. With hopes that other starting veterans such as Ben Simmons, Tobias Harris, Dwight Howard, and Danny Green could step up in Embiid's absence, the Sixers fell short on Saturday night to Memphis.

It's easy to assume that if the 76ers had Embiid available to them, they would've had a much better chance of coming away with a win as opposed to losing by two points. Embiid or not, though, Sixers head coach Doc Rivers doesn't want to hear any excuses. As Rivers understands his team hasn't been healthy, the setbacks aren't valid excuses in the locker room he's running.

“I’m not letting our guys use excuses,” Rivers said following Saturday night's loss to Memphis. “We got to get away from that. Listen, this is gonna be an extraordinary year through COVID, injuries, get over it, and win the game. Find a way to win the game. This was a winnable game tonight."

Winnable, it was indeed. Although the 76ers found themselves trailing by double-digits during the game, they nearly completed a fourth-quarter comeback led by Shake Milton. Unfortunately, the Sixers couldn't pull out in front of Memphis last-minute as they couldn't avoid making mistakes and turnovers.

“It’s not who played tonight, for me, it was how we played,” Rivers stated. “I thought we were a sloppy basketball team, and when you play that way, you deserve to lose the game." By the end of the night, the Sixers turned the ball over 23 times, with two of those turnovers coming in crunch time within the final 30 seconds as Philly attempted to complete the comeback. 

Perhaps, if the Sixers were at full-strength, they wouldn't have forced any plays, which typically turn into mistakes. Regardless of the 'what-if' scenarios, Doc Rivers doesn't want to excuse his team's performance on Saturday night. 

This season's circumstances might be wildly unfortunate because of the pandemic, but many teams across the league are dealing with it as well. Therefore, excuses due to being shorthanded are unacceptable in Doc Rivers' locker room. 

Justin Grasso covers the Philadelphia 76ers for Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on Twitter: @JGrasso_