The Philadelphia 76ers had interest in hiring Mike D’Antoni as head coach in 2020 before eventually settling on Doc Rivers.
According to Marc Stein of Substack, the 76ers could potentially revisit D’Antoni as their head coach. D’Antoni and James Harden nearly reached The Finals in 2018 when they took the Golden State Warriors to seven games.
“The conspiracy theory already making the rounds in league coaching circles holds that Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey will eventually want Mike D’Antoni to take over in the hot seat for Philadelphia’s new Joel Embiid/James Harden tag team after D’Antoni’s offensive creativity helped catapult Harden to three scoring titles in Houston,” writes Stein.
According to Yaron Weitzman of Fox Sports, Embiid was supportive of the 76ers potentially hiring D’Antoni in 2020. D’Antoni worked as an assistant for the 76ers early in Embiid’s career. D’Antoni even told some former staffers with the Rockets to begin looking for houses in Philadelphia thinking a deal was close.