Doc Rivers on taking Bucks job during season: ‘I wouldn’t wish this on anyone’
Just days after officially being hired to coach the Milwaukee Bucks, who are tied with the Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves for the NBA’s second-best record, amid Adrian Griffin‘s dismissal, Doc Rivers was formally announced as the Milwaukee Bucks head coach this weekend.
Rivers, 62, has two dozen years of head coaching experience, most recently with Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers. He coached three seasons in Philadelphia before getting axed, but has also spent time as the head coach of the Orlando Magic, Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers.
This marks the first time that Rivers will be taking over for a team midseason, which so happens to be for a title contender with a top-2 player in the league in Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“I’ve never done this,” Rivers said at his introductery press conference Saturday. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, I can tell you that, just from the day-and-a-half. It’s going to be a challenge. It’s a challenge that I’m running towards. We’ve got to get organized quickly. Can’t try to do too much too soon. We’re in the middle of a season, so we’ve got to try to keep our rhythm.
“There are changes that we have to make, there’s no doubt about that. We’ll start working on it immediately.”
Despite owning the NBA’s second-best record with Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard plus aging, albeit productive players in Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez at the helm, the Bucks had serious warts, particularly on the defensive end.
At the time of Griffin’s firing, the Bucks owned the league’s 20th-ranked defense, despite having the second-most potent offense. They were blitzing and playing higher up in the drop with Brook Lopez, which compromised its back-line and made the defense more susceptible around the rim than it ever was under Mike Budenholzer.
It didn’t help that there’s a monumental defensive drop-off between Lillard and Jrue Holiday, who it traded for Lillard in September, at the point-of-attack, even though the offensive upgrade mitigated that gap in a regular season context. That said, it would’ve been difficult to justify a deep playoff run if those defensive results were maintained.
It might not improve substantially between now and April, nor does change indicate they will all of a sudden go on some deep playoff run. Doc Rivers has been at the forefront of multiple playoff flameouts over his coaching career, blowing multiple 2-0, 3-1 and 3-2 series leads. Now, he will have yet another bite at the apple, where he will rely on his star veterans to climb over the mountain.
“I’ve been through everything, I really have as a coach,” he said, according to ESPN’s Jamal Collier. “There’s a lot of highs, there’s lows, and you work through them and you learn from them always. At the end of the day, this is a relationship business. Your job as a coach is to get some of the guys to do some of the things they don’t want to do.
“You’re not going to be popular all the time and that’s fine, you have to accept that when you accept a leadership role. That’s just part of it. But if you can get the buy-in and get everybody to buy in and be on the same page, then you can have some success.”
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