Adrian Griffin was set up to fail from the start. The moment he was appointed head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, this felt like the making of a tempestuous union. Watching Griffin ink a deal to assume one of the most pressure-filled, win-now jobs in the NBA, then hire former Bucks coach Terry Stotts as an assistant, only for management to plant Damian Lillard’s former head coach as an assistant, felt like being at a shotgun wedding. Griffin was always a poor fit, and it was never going to last, but nobody expected it to be a cameo appearance. The glaring neon sign that Griffin was not long for the Bucks was evident from the moment Stotts was hired as a pseudo-offensive coordinator.
It turns out Stotts wasn’t the only coach management was philandering with. According to The Athletic, Doc Rivers was initially a consultant to Griffin at the behest of the Bucks when the latter was hired in May of 2023. After the In-Season Tournament, they again approached Rivers to serve as an assistant to Griffin. Griffin was never the guy. He was merely a caretaker. What’s that old saying? Don’t let your girlfriend stop you from meeting your wife? Yep, that applies here.
When one door closes, another one opens. Usually, Rivers steps through that door. The moment Griffin’s hiring was fired, the pro-Doc PR machine launched with more precision than a presidential campaign. You’d have thought Rivers was running on a third-party ticket given the way every insider from Shams Charania to Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Rivers was being considered as the frontrunner to replace Griffin. Rivers’ name was invoked as a candidate to replace Monty Williams as the Phoenix Suns head coach this summer, but the push feels more direct now.
In the midst of their 30-13 start to the season, Griffin had the aura of an ornamental statue rather than a respected bench authority. Giannis Antetokounmpo’s preference to play for Griffin, while he negotiated a contract extension, was what helped him earn the job, but less than a month into the season, Antetokounmpo was showing up Griffin at the scorer’s table. The perimeter defense is in shambles since Lillard was acquired in the Jrue Holiday swap and there weren’t any solutions on the way.
If anything, Griffin made it worse by exacerbating their woes by implementing an aggressive defensive scheme that relied on one of the league’s worst defensive guards pressuring the ball and forcing turnovers. That went by the wayside, and fortunately Lillard and Antetokounmpo were transcendent enough offensively to keep Milwaukee in contention for the top seed. Their aspirations are higher.
But the expectation was that Griffin would at least get the David Blatt courtesy to stick around for at least a playoff, maybe even a quarter of next season. Teams sitting on the cusp of the No. 1 seed typically don’t shoot their head coaches out of a cannon, so there was reason to believe he’d get an opportunity to grow into the job. Instead, the Bucks cut short his tenure after 43 games, the third-shortest stint in NBA history. The only shorter stints were Bob Weiss’ 30 games as the Sonics coach after 11 years as an assistant, and Jerry Tarkanian’s 9-11 record in 20 games with San Antonio. The Bucks wanted Griffin gone so badly that he was canned with a record 17 games OVER .500 so they could potentially make room for Rivers.
Warriors assistant Kenny Atkinson is also a candidate, but who are we kidding? This is Rivers’ job to lose. Firing a head coach in the middle of the season is always a precarious move, however, Antetokounmpo’s bubbling frustrations, the dip in Lillard’s play and usage offensively, and a slump spurred the Bucks to act. There just aren’t as many bonafide championship pedigree coaches floating around near the All-Star break as there were this summer. Trae Young hasn’t been around Quin Snyder long enough to shove his body overboard into the unemployment abyss, so that pipeline is out of supply.
The shallow field is Rivers’ gain. Maybe it’s the nickname that lends him a credibility he doesn’t quite have anymore. Since 2008, Rivers’ career has hit rough patches, potholes and he’s driven at least three franchises off the cliff, but Rivers’ agent always finds a way to damage organizations from within. Rivers has more lives than Jason Vorhees.
It’s also jarring to witness Philadelphia’s more cohesive offensive unit since losing Harden and Rivers. His rotations, the execution and outdated offensive philosophy have been found wanting in recent years. The league has evolved since Rivers’ crowning achievement in 2008 with the Boston Celtics, but he hasn’t caught up to the times. Nurse overhauled the Sixers offense to resemble the Denver Nuggets’, Harden was shipped to the Clippers, and ran more of their offense through Embiid and sailed through the East.
Philadelphia’s free-flowing offense highlights just how much potential Rivers’ Sixer squads squandered. Rivers is really the Bucks’ only option. He has them cornered unless the they decide to ride with veteran assistant Joe Prunty for the duration of the season. Then again, if they wanna drudge up the fossils of a retread, maybe they should look to Mike Budenholzer.
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