Editor’s note, Jan. 24, 2024: The Milwaukee Bucks are hiring Doc Rivers as their new head coach, league sources tell The Athletic.
The Bucks’ choice to fire first-year head coach Adrian Griffin on Tuesday was no overnight decision.
It was born out of months of underwhelming play with internal concerns growing about the severe decline of their once-elite defense, the flawed use of newcomer Damian Lillard alongside franchise centerpiece Giannis Antetokounmpo and a widespread fear that this group, which was widely expected to contend for a title, was likely to fall short if Milwaukee stood pat.
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After the In-Season Tournament in December, when the Bucks lost to the Indiana Pacers in Las Vegas and the internal skepticism grew regarding Griffin’s ability to lead, there were strong signs that a change was coming.
League sources say Doc Rivers, who is an ESPN analyst after getting fired by the Philadelphia 76ers last May, began to serve as an informal consultant to Griffin at the behest of the Bucks. One month later, multiple sources briefed on the matter now indicate that Rivers is the serious leader for the now-vacant position and the preferred choice of key stakeholders.
The Bucks have started discussions with Rivers to become the new head coach of the franchise, league sources said. Warriors assistant coach Kenny Atkinson, who was a runner-up to Griffin in the Bucks’ head coaching search last year, is a candidate for the job as well if the team is unable to secure a deal with Rivers.
The trouble came early this season for Griffin, the 49-year-old who spent the last 15 seasons as an NBA assistant for five teams following a nine-year NBA playing career. His inauspicious start first drew the national spotlight when first-year assistant coach Terry Stotts stepped down on Oct. 19, 2023, one day before the team’s preseason finale.
Stotts’ decision came about for myriad reasons, but all of the underlying issues seemed to come to a head following a brief verbal argument at a shootaround in Oklahoma City on Oct. 17, 2023, first reported by The Athletic.
League sources said Stotts, who was Lillard’s coach in Portland for his first nine seasons there, and Griffin never saw eye to eye on his role and responsibilities as an assistant, and the disrespect Stotts felt in that situation served as the final straw. Regardless of why Stotts headed for the exits, the notion of Griffin’s coaching staff losing its most experienced voice was an indisputable setback.
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With Stotts out of the picture and the Bucks still looking for their identity as they made the semifinals of the In-Season Tournament, the franchise reached out to Rivers to serve as a veteran coaching voice to help Griffin find a path forward through the season.
While the Bucks had compiled a 15-6 record before their trip to Las Vegas, leadership organized a meeting between Griffin and Rivers, who was broadcasting In-Season Tournament games for ESPN. Per league sources, the organization believed Rivers, a 24-year NBA head coach and champion with the Celtics in 2008, could offer Griffin advice and guidance on how to navigate his first NBA season with high expectations and a championship-caliber team.
Following the Bucks’ disappointing loss to the Pacers in Las Vegas, Milwaukee ripped off a seven-game win streak and appeared to steady the ship with a solid four-game road trip around Christmas. But problems arose again in the new year. Team sources said players began to question Griffin’s schemes on both sides of the floor and the strategy that was being laid out for them each night.
While players were willing to be patient with Griffin as he learned on the job because of the team’s vast personnel changes at the start of the season, their questions grew more significant as the team failed to show substantial growth at the season’s midway point.
According to team sources, the issues plaguing Griffin’s early tenure ranged from putting together strong schemes on both ends of the floor for the Bucks to fulfill their championship potential to successfully communicating his vision to his players for them to execute it on the floor. But the bottom line, given the high stakes of this Bucks era: The concern over Griffin’s ability became a question too big for executive leadership to withstand any longer.
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All season long, the Bucks have struggled on defense after being one of the league’s top defensive teams for five straight seasons under former coach Mike Budenholzer. As of Tuesday morning, the Bucks ranked 22nd in defensive rating, allowing 116.8 points per 100 possessions, but the frustrations regarding the team’s defense had reached a boiling point following a 122-116 loss to the Houston Rockets on Jan. 6.
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Following that loss, Antetokounmpo spent seven and a half minutes bemoaning the Bucks’ defensive issues.
“Now, defensively, we have to have a plan,” he said. “What is our strategy? Are we going to give a lot of open 3s? Are we going to let them get in the paint? When they go in the post, are we going to stay with ours and play one-on-one? What is our strategy?
“Right now, we are giving everything. We are giving everything. We are giving the 3s. We are giving straight-line drives. We are letting guys play in the post and get comfortable. We’re giving offensive rebounds.”
The frustrations continued on Jan. 17, when the Bucks endured a 40-point drubbing by the Cleveland Cavaliers, one that came without Antetokounmpo because of a right shoulder contusion. A team that entered the season with the splash of the Lillard trade had started to sink. It was the fifth loss in a nine-game stretch with consecutive losses to the Bucks’ newest rival, the Pacers, having started the month, and the humiliating loss to the Cavs only making it worse.
More importantly, with their defense that was such a staple of their title-contending seasons under Budenholzer having declined, the Cavs game was the latest evidence that these Bucks aren’t as good as many people expected them to be — including some of the key decision-makers within the Bucks.
With a 30-13 record, the Bucks are only 3 1/2 games behind the Boston Celtics for first in the Eastern Conference. But nearly three years after they won a title for the first time in half a century, and with Antetokounmpo showing his faith in their franchise yet again by signing a three-year, $186 million extension in the summer, a higher standard has long since been set in Milwaukee. Winning regular-season games is not enough.
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By firing Budenholzer, the NBA’s winningest coach from 2018-23, the Bucks made it clear that Griffin would be expected to compete for championships. By hiring Griffin, they took a calculated risk on a coach who would inevitably need time to develop as head coach. But Griffin’s innumerable growing pains led to his demise. The embarrassing loss to the Cavs appears to have been a tipping point.
With the newest member of ownership, Jimmy Haslam, in the building, it served as a vivid reminder of the questions Griffin has struggled to answer. The Bucks, who had spent so many nights struggling to find the synergy between their dynamic duo of Lillard and Antetokounmpo, looked lost as they tried to figure out how to build an offensive attack without their franchise centerpiece.
It could have been the perfect time to let Lillard loose, for him to enjoy the kind of offensive freedom he was used to for all those years in Portland and that has been so much tougher to come by in his Bucks experience. Instead, after the Cavs jumped out to a 22-2 lead in the first quarter, Lillard finished with just 17 points on 7-of-20 shooting to go with five assists and a minus-26.
Khris Middleton, the Bucks’ three-time All-Star who has faced a daunting adjustment period this season, missed 9 of 10 shots and was a minus-40. The list went on from there. And even with Antetokounmpo’s absence, it was the kind of outing that no doubt hurt Griffin’s cause. While wins over the lowly Detroit Pistons followed on Saturday and Monday, the team’s poor performance in both games did little to ease the unrest growing within the organization.
Overall, the Bucks have performed well on offense this season. Averaging 124.2 points per game and scoring 120.5 points per 100 possessions, they have been the league’s second-most effective and efficient offense, trailing only the Pacers. But while they have scored successfully, the offense itself has been somewhat disjointed as the Bucks have attempted to combine the offensive skills of Antetokounmpo and Lillard.
League sources also said Lillard has spent much of this season struggling with the way the Bucks function on the offensive end. While he has remained patient with coaches and teammates, there was an inevitable pressure on Griffin from the organization to make the most of Lillard’s talent that validates the choice to part ways with Jrue Holiday, Grayson Allen and three first-round picks to land him.
For the season, Lillard’s usage rate of 26.9 is not only well below his final season in Portland (a career-high mark of 33.1) but well below Antetokounmpo’s rate of 32.2, which is third in the NBA (which is down from his league-leading mark of 37.3 last season). Middleton is third on the Bucks at 23.6.
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Despite Lillard being one of just eight players averaging at least 25 points, six assists and four rebounds this season, he has seen his efficiency plummet. From his overall field-goal percentage (46.3 to 42.7) to this three-point proficiency (37.1 to 35.1), he’s not the marksman that he was before.
Since Dec. 21, Lillard’s scoring has dipped to 23.5 points per game and he’s shooting just 40.4 percent from the field and 31 percent from three. Griffin’s inability to create more on-court harmony among his best players on the offensive end remained a point of contention until Griffin’s end.
On the other end of the floor, the Bucks’ struggles were even more obvious. Some were at least partially expected because of the massive changes in the team’s defensive personnel.
To open the season, Griffin employed an aggressive defensive game plan that looked an awful lot like the units he ran as the top assistant and defensive coordinator under Nick Nurse in Toronto. After a 130-111 loss in Toronto in the fourth game of the season though, a group of veteran players went to Griffin and told him that such an aggressive scheme was not going to fit with their personnel and suggested letting Brook Lopez, the 2023 runner-up for NBA Defensive Player of the Year, go back to playing drop coverage in pick-and-rolls and remaining closer to the rim throughout defensive possessions rather than trapping or switching near the 3-point line.
Changing Lopez’s responsibilities helped the Bucks stabilize themselves defensively after a rough start to the season, but they are still struggling to consistently put together stops. To this point in the season, Griffin and his staff had not found a way to scheme around their personnel issues and properly leverage the defensive strengths of Lopez and Antetokounmpo, the five-time NBA All-Defensive Team honoree and the 2020 Defensive Player of the Year.
Following Antetokounmpo’s impassioned plea for a better defensive effort, the Bucks gave up 132 points and lost to the Utah Jazz (16th in offensive rating), their fourth loss in five games. They bounced back from the loss to the Jazz with a dominant 135-102 win over the Boston Celtics, who were playing their fifth game in seven nights, and have now won five of their last six games. But that stretch of games includes the aforementioned blowout loss in Cleveland and a Saturday win in which the Bucks allowed 135 points against the 4-38 Detroit Pistons. In January, the Bucks allowed 122.1 points per 100 possessions, putting them 28th in defensive rating for the month.
With Griffin gone, the Bucks now have to find a way to correct course and get to a place where they believe they can win an NBA championship this season.
Related reading
Nehm: Bucks look lost without Antetokounmpo in sloppy defeat to Cavaliers
Nehm and Partnow: Breaking down the Bucks’ defense: What’s gone right, what’s gone wrong
Nehm: Bucks hear boos at home as defense gets destroyed again in loss to Jazz
(Top photo of Adrian Griffin: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)