Sixers Players Will Learn Roles Differently Under Doc Rivers

In the past, Brett Brown might've told each Sixers player their roles one on one in an office setting. With Doc Rivers in charge, the circumstances change dramatically.

Being one of the most well-known and respected coaches in the NBA, Doc Rivers doesn't have to abide by the industry-standard regarding his coaching style. While not everything he does is out of the ordinary and entirely innovative, there are certain things Rivers does that you wouldn't see anywhere else around the league.

Recently, The Athletic's Rich Hofmann caught up with a few players who've played for Rivers in the past. When discussing the new Sixers head coach, Jamal Crawford, Brian Scalabrine, and Kevin Eastman explained just how 76ers players would likely learn their roles on the team ahead of the 2020-2021 NBA season.

“[You're told your role] in front of everybody. It’s unbelievable,” Scalabrine told Hofmann. "It wasn’t even private, it was in front of everybody, everybody’s role in front of everybody… That is an unbelievable amount of clout to be able to do that.”

Usually, NBA head coach's issue player roles in private. When Brett Brown was running the Sixers for the last seven seasons, each player would individually have a sit-down meeting with Brown in his office and determine how they will be used within the organization moving forward.

On Rivers' team, however, no role is private. On the practice court, everybody gathers around as the veteran head coach calls out each player individually and goes in-depth, explaining their job on the team. Some might view this exercise as a way to call out players in front of the team -- but that's not Rivers' intentions. 

"He was actually trying to prove how valuable each person was," Eastman said. "If you subtract any of those roles from the teams, we would be short of that. And his roles I believe are defined as ‘What are the pieces that need to be together to have a chance at being in a true championship run?’”

Doc Rivers' approach to issuing roles on a team might be out of the ordinary, but he's made it a normal process within the organizations that employed him ever since he's been coaching the Boston Celtics. Considering he's won the second-most amount of games out of all active NBA coaches, Rivers' approach to the game shouldn't leave any question marks among Sixers players, who needed a change in leadership.

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