After a tumultuous first half of the season the Bucks fired their first year head coach Adrian Griffin. The year got off to a weird start when assistant coach, and long time friend of Damian Lillard, Terry Stotts stepped down after Adrian Griffin verbally undressed him in a practice.
When this news came most people were able to connect the dots that the reason Griffin had gone after Stotts so hard was because he didn’t like that the Bucks had brought in an assistant coach who had so much head coaching experience and in particular head coaching experience coaching the Bucks new star Dame Lillard. You don’t have to do too many mental gymnastics to see how Griffin might have thought “They brought in this guy to replace me if I fail”
Nobody but Griffin knows exactly what he was trying to accomplish by attacking Stotts to the point of getting him to resign. Maybe he thought if he showed the players how tough he was they would respect him more or maybe he thought that he he bullied Stotts enough he wouldn’t dare go behind his back to get take his job but I think to most people it just came off as an insecure first time head coach not knowing how to handle the situation.
Maybe Stotts was there as a head coach in waiting and maybe he wasn’t but if I was an owner or a GM I would want to hire a coach who could handle knowing that there was a plan for if he failed I just think from a mentality aspect the great competitors (and coaches are competitors) embrace the doubters and rise above it and if you are someone that doesn’t have the juice and knows they don’t have the juice you might react the way Griffin did.
Anyway, fighting with Terry Stotts was not why Adrian Griffin was fired. He tried to have the Bucks play a Toronto Raptors switch and scramble style of defense with lots of blitzing that demanded the Bucks big men, who were used to playing in a drop, to get up and chase players around the perimeter. I would say this was always a bad idea but I think that part of the reason they moved on from Bud was because he was stubborn about playing his drop defense and they wanted a coach who would make adjustments and play a different style. After a few weeks of playing this way it wasn’t working and the Bucks revolted against their coach and demanded that they go back to their old style of defense and Griffin relented.
So they brought Griffin in to change the defense and he tried and they hated it but that wasn’t the only reason Griffin had to go. It is weird to critique the Bucks offense when by most offensive stats they rank out very well but they just weren’t playing up to their potential. When Dame got traded to the Bucks everyone was excited for the Dame and Giannis pick and roll and up to this point of the season that has just not been a part of the offense so far. Dame has been one of the best offensive players in the history of the NBA in part by running a high volume of pick and rolls but Giannis is also used to having the ball in his hand and so far hasn’t wanted to be reduced to a screen and roll guy and he doesn’t have the game to be a pick and pop guy so they’ve stayed away from this.
So the defense was a bust and it pissed off Brook Lopez, the offense wasn’t what it could be because he couldn’t get Giannis to buy into one of the most proven forms of offense in the league and he alienated Dame by blasting his favorite coach out of the building. Even though the team’s record was good everything else about the team was a struggle and I applaud the Bucks for seeing past the good win loss record and pulling the plug on the Adrian Griffin era.
Seriously a less serious franchise would definitely be too afraid of the public pushback from firing a coach with a 70% winning percentage or they could have been too prideful to admit that they fired their championship head coach for a guy that couldn’t make it to the All Star game or they could have been too cheap to pay Bud, Griffin and the incoming head coach but the Bucks front office and ownership are serious about winning so they said damn the optics and the money we need a better coach.
But here’s the problem, they chose to bring in Doc Rivers.
In Doc River’s last two coaching stints he was brought in to coach teams that were loaded with talent but hadn’t been able to get to the next level. He had success coaching a loaded Boston Celtics team and had gotten a reputation as a star whisperer. However in both cases when Doc was brought in to take a good playoff team to a championship level those teams continued to underperform not only did he not get any of his teams to the next level he never even really got close and even though Doc’s strength is that he can handle stars in every case egos on his teams ran rampant and played a part in why his teams always fell short.
As The Bucks get ready to be the NBA’s newest Doc Rivers team I want to take a look at his last two coaching stints
Doc’s Time on the Clippers
Doc River’s was hired to coach the Clippers in 2013. The Clippers were in their second year of the Chris Paul and Blake Griffin era. The first year of the CP3 Clippers (2011-2012) the Clippers had gone 40-26 in a shortened season and won their first round playoff series before getting swept by the Spurs. The following year (2012-2013) the Clippers went 56-26 (which was only good enough for 4th in the West!!! Last year the Nuggets comfortably won the west with just 53 wins. As much as people complain about the bad teams in the NBA there is a lot more parity now than there was just 10 years ago) but despite this impressive record they were upset in the first round by the Memphis Grizzlies and that was a wrap for head coach Vinny Del Negro hello Doc Rivers.
This was an exciting time for the Clippers, they had stolen Chris Paul from the Lakers, Blake Griffin was just entering his prime and now they had hired championship head coach Doc Rivers at the same time the Lakers were as bad as they had been since Shaq first left. The Clippers had never in their history even made it to the Conference Finals but now they had the players and the coach to change that.
Over the next 4 seasons with CP3 Blake Griffin and Doc Rivers the Clippers won 57, 56, 53 and 51 games, the first two seasons they lost in the second round of the playoffs and in the next two seasons they lost in the first round. The lowlight of the entire era being blowing a 3 – 1 to the Houston Rockets. There is plenty of context and injuries behind some of those disappointing playoff failures but at the end of the day the Clippers were a talented team that won 56 games and a playoff series before Doc came in and after he came in they never got any further and when they finally got within a game of making it to that elusive conference finals they absolutely choked it away. Over his first four years that core did not improve or evolve in any way that you could point to and say that has Doc Rivers fingerprints on it. Also like I mentioned part of the Doc Rivers allure was that he could handle stars but under his watch this team became legendarily toxic.
After the Clippers traded Chris Paul they took a step back and I think Doc actually did some pretty good coaching getting the most out of some limited rosters but then the Clippers traded for PG and signed Kawhi Leonard and suddenly Doc was coaching one of the most talented rosters in the league.
That first season of the Kawhi Clippers was certainly unique. I’m not sure how involved Doc was in some of the promises that the Clippers made to Kawhi but the reports that came out about how Kawhi was on a different plane of existence from the rest of the team were very strange. However in the Covid shortened season they managed to be the 2 seed and going into the playoffs they were the favorites to win it all. But in the second round they were up 3 – 1 on the Nuggets and then had a complete meltdown and lost the series and Doc was fired.
Now the bubble was weird but what has come out since about that Clippers team looks even worse for Doc as over the last 4 years players from that team have come and and said they were good enough to win they just didn’t want to be there anymore which to me points to a failure of coaching I mean you gon up 3-1 then you lose 3 in a row and then anyone you ask about it says “yeah we just gave up” that’s on the leader of the team! Players have also come out and talked about how they were not working the way they were supposed to and they never developed chemistry and they weren’t taking things seriously all season so that’s another strike against the coach of the team. Also they were a mess on both ends of the court and Doc didn’t have a single counter for what Nuggets had going on in those last 3 games.
The very next year after Doc was fired the Clippers made the Western Conference Finals and it wasn’t even like the chips fell their way as their best player Kawhi Leonard got hurt but Ty Lue didn’t let his players quit and they rallied from down 2-0 against the 1 seed Jazz to make the Clippers first ever conference finals.
Despite the fact that Doc spent the entire 2010’s underachieving based on the talent on his squad and had just been a part of one of the most embarrassing blown leads in the history of the NBA another team that has been a stranger to the conference finals couldn’t wait to hire him.
Doc’s Time on the Sixers
The Philadelphia 76ers came out the otherside of the process in the 2017-2018 season when they went 52-30 and won a playoff series against the Heat before losing to the Celtics in the second round. They followed that up by trading for Jimmy Butler, going 51-31 in the regular season, beating the upstart Nets in the first round before losing a hard fought 7 game series to the eventual champions. After a disappointing 2019-2020 regular season followed by an even more disappointing playoff sweep at the hands of the Celtics the Sixers said goodbye to their process era coach Brett Brown and welcomed in Doc Rivers.
Again the idea was Brett Brown doesn’t have what it takes to get the most out of Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid we need a championship head coach to get through to our guys.
Doc’s first season in Philadelphia got off to a good start as they won 49 games in a shortened season and were the 1 seed for the first time in the post process era. Their reward for their dominant season was they got to avoid a matchup with the Bucks or the Nets and instead got a first round matchup vs the lowly Wizards which they won with ease and then they would get the 5 seed Hawks which on paper was a series they should have won quite easily.
But the games aren’t played on paper and the Hawks upset the Sixers in a seven game series. There’s plenty of blame to go around for this loss but what stands out to me is Ben Simmons losing the ability to score in the 4th quarter and Doc never going away from him. And then after they were eliminated both Embiid and Doc threw Simmons under the bus and lit that relationship on fire which brings us to the next year.
The next year Simmons was traded and the 2 year James Harden era of the Sixers began. The first year they ran up against the 1 seed Heat in the second round with an injured Embiid and only a half season with Harden so it’s hard to hold that against him but the next year they went went up 3-2 vs the Celtics and had 2 chances to close that series out and especially in game 7 they did not come to play.
In addition to multiple embarrassing playoff losses in his time in Philly by the time it was over he had 2 different star players completely lose faith in the team and demand to be traded.
Now under Nick Nurse the Sixers style of play is much faster with much better ball movement than it was under Doc. One of the biggest difficulties for the Doc Sixers was that Embiid would get the ball and get doubled and they couldn’t get good offense off those looks or rather they turned the ball over in those spots too frequently now under Nurse Embiid gets the ball in space with cutters and shooters all around him and he is just 1 pass away from getting someone a good shot which makes him much harder double which makes it easier for him to score. Everything is just easier now. Also Tyrese Maxey has been fully unleashed which may have more to do with Harden being gone opening up more opportunities but even still it never seemed like Doc trusted Maxey enough to turn the offense over to him and now Nurse has him as one of the best players in the league.
Doc has been going on the Bill Simmons podcast and when Bill asks him about his time on the Sixers it is very interesting to hear him say things like “We just couldn’t play that way with James (Harden)” and I just want for once Bill to push back and say “well weren’t you the coach?” and I think that is the problem that I have with Doc Rivers being hired to coach the Bucks.
At the end of the day it’s the players on the court who decide the game and it hard to know exactly where a coach’s impact starts and stops and I’m not writing all of this to say that it is all Doc’s fault that these underachieved there were injuries, egos, attitude problems, Star players choking and some plain bad luck but and I don’t think that Doc is necessarily an anchor that holds his teams back he is just not a difference maker and after 10 straight years of teams underperforming I don’t know how you justify him being the guy you bring in to guide your all in fully leveraged team to victory.
I wanted to the Bucks to hire someone that would go in there and demand that Giannis start setting screens for Dame and get Dame to buy in more on defense and I just feel like with Doc being the one they brought in we are just 4 years away from him being back on Simmons podcast saying “we just couldn’t run pick and roll with Giannis as a screen setter” Or “we just couldn’t do anything but drop with Dame on defense” and if you are the Bucks I think that you should want more than that. I feel like the takeaway from Rivers’ last two stops is he comes into a good situation and doesn’t make it any better. If a good coach gets the most out of his players and a bad coach gets the least then Doc is somewhere in the middle not necessarily taking anything away but not exactly setting his guys up to over achieve. As I’m looking at the playoff team coaches for the East here is roughly how I would rank them.
- Eric Spoelstra
- Nick Nurse
- Rick Carlisle
- Tom Thibodeau
- Joe Mazzulla
- Jamahl Mosley
- Doc Rivers
- JB Bickerstaff
- Billy Donovan
- Jacque Vaughn
Admittedly I don’t think there a ton of guys out there who the Bucks could have hired that I would immediately thought this guy is a top 5 coach in the East but I was a Bucks fan I would have greatly preferred that they had poached a top assistant off another team who is more of an unknown who might have some upside rather than going with Doc who has a 10 year track record of not getting the most out of teams with superstar talent.
I guess it is probably easier for me to be a critic and say that they hired the wrong guy when I am not the one who has to go out and find the “right guy” so here are some people that I think would have been a better choice than Doc.
These are not in any order besides the order that I thought of them in. For example after some thought I think I would have picked Jodi Fernandez but he’s square in the middle of the list but I won’t pretend to be able to know if Sam Cassell or Charles Lee would be a better hire
Mike Budenholzer
I mean…
Kenny Atkinson
This is probably the most obvious and his name was certainly floated out there. Atkinson did a good job building up a Nets team from scratch before KD and Kyrie came in and detonated that team. The fact that he couldn’t coexist with KD and Kyrie kind of branded him as development guy rather than a championship guy but I don’t think that is fair as he really only got one KD season before he was fired mostly for refusing to be KD and Kyrie’s puppet which, like I mentioned above, is the exact kind of demeanor I want for a coach that is going to come and in try to take over a team with superstar talent mid season.
Terry Stotts
Another funny one since he was on the staff just a few months ago but I think Stotts is a good head coach. Those Portland teams were not very talented and I thought in the season where they had a deep playoff run he out coached Michael Malone in their second round series against the Nuggets.
Kevin Young
Young was a finalist for the Suns job last year before they hired Frank Vogel but the Suns made it up to him by making him the highest paid assistant in the league. Young was a key part of Monty Williams’ staff in turning around the Suns and based on what we’ve seen from Monty in Detroit, Young might have played a larger role than people thought.
Jodi Fernandez
In this year’s annual players survey Fernandez was voted best assistant coach by a considerable margin. Fernandez is part of Mike Brown’s staff that came in and helped turn the Kings around and before that he was on Michael Malone’s staff in Denver for the previous 6 years.
Sam Cassell
Cassell has been an assistant under Doc Rivers for many years and I did just spend a lot of time thrashing his mentor but if I was the Bucks I’d prefer the younger guy who was a player more recently and just because he’s worked under Doc doesn’t mean he would do everything Doc would. The Celtics brought him on to support Joe Mazzulla this year after Mazzulla was very quickly elevated to head coaching status and the Celtic’s record speaks for itself.
Charles Lee
Lee was one of Bud’s top assistants so if you are having firer’s remorse over Bud and you are too embarrassed to call him back maybe you could get Charles Lee and he can bring back a lot of the stuff they liked about Bud and maybe he’ll have his own twist on it.
David Adelman
Another heartwarming tale of nepotism Adelman got his shot under his dad when he was the coach of the Timberwolves he has since worked under Flip Saunders, Frank Vogel and now Michael Malone. Nepotism jokes aside Adelman is a very good coach and has been a big part of the Nuggets success.
Igor Kokoskov
Igor has been an assistant for 24 years so he has plenty of experience and also has experience coaching the Serbian national team. He’s more of an offensive guy so I don’t know if he could solve the Bucks defensive woes but it would be cool to see Dame and Giannis unleashed by a coach heralded as an offensive genius.
Mike D’Antoni
D’Antoni is kind of like Doc but without the 2008 championship in the sense that he has had lots of opportunities to coach and has been pretty good but has routinely come up short even when he was working with all time talent. However his teams have a strong offensive identity in a way that I don’t feel like Doc’s teams do and it would be cool to see Dame and Giannis act like a super charged Nash and Stoudemire.
The Dishwasher 
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