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What a colossal mistake! milwaukee dollars made.
After firing Adrian Griffin just 43 games into his head coaching career, the Bucks turned to perhaps the viable name least likely to live up to the expectations and pressure now mounting in Milwaukee: doctor rivers.
There are a multitude of factors at play in Milwaukee, none of which seem to be a particular specialty of Rivers. This is a 30-13 team that just fired its head coach, which means every move, stumble, struggle and drama will be magnified, requiring constant training that protects its players from the drama surrounding the locker room.
There is a need to properly and completely unlock the Giannis Antetokounmpo-Damian Lillard tandem. Rivers never did it with the duo of Joel Embiid and James Harden. Not even the triumvirate of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. Etc.
And, most importantly, is the fact that you don’t fire a head coach while bragging about having one of the NBAbetter records unless you believe him incapable of making a postseason breakthrough, something Rivers hasn’t done since his new players were in high school.
This is not a useless, throwaway level of concern for this Bucks team and the decision they have made. Rivers has proven himself time and time again (and certainly since he led the Boston Celtics to a championship sixteen years ago, unable to lead championship-conspiring teams anywhere good.
This caution when turning to Rivers is also an open secret throughout the NBA.
When news broke that Griffin was out and Rivers could very well be his replacement, a rival NBA executive texted CBS Sports: “And the other Eastern Conference contenders are breathing easier.”
There is a reason for that relief.
Rivers is literally one of the coaches who has most often snatched failure from the jaws of success in the NBA postseason. Again. And again. And again.
In its illustrious history, the NBA has seen just 13 blown leads in 3-1 drives, and Rivers has somehow coached three of them. He is 6-10 in Game 7, by far the most losses for a coach in NBA history. Ten. That is, obviously, quite a lot. And it turns out that he is 17-33 in games in which his teams had a chance to clinch a playoff series, which is a brutal 34% win rate. That’s also the most losses for a coach in such a scenario in NBA history.
There are many reasons why Rivers is a poor choice for Bucks general manager Jon Horst and the other decision makers in Milwaukee. But first and foremost are Rivers’ almost staggering shortcomings in the postseason since he won that championship in Boston.
He had a star-studded team with the Los Angeles Clippers for seven seasons and never reached a single conference final, a ceiling Sixers fans will be familiar with. Because during his three years in Philadelphia, while coaching the guy who dropped 70 points the other night, Rivers’ teams again failed to make it past the second round of the playoffs.
Perhaps that’s because Rivers’ teams have also blown multiple 3-2 series leads — four, if you count, including last year against the Celtics, when he was still coaching that Sixers team.
That also offers insight into why Rivers is a puzzling choice for the Bucks’ job. While the East has plenty of potential postseason landmines, the Heatthe new look pacemakerthe red-hot Cavs: There are two big dogs that Milwaukee will have to face to reach a finals.
One is the Celtics. The other is the Sixers, the team that became convinced enough of Rivers’ inability to succeed that they fired him last season.
That means that, with the Bucks hiring Rivers, they passed on Nick Nurse to hire his assistant, who they just fired 43 games into his coaching career, only to then turn to the guy Nurse successfully replaced in Philadelphia.
Why, then, would Milwaukee turn to Rivers with this story of lost series, the heartbreak and disappointment, and the optics of the whole thing? Why, if Griffin’s firing surely increases the pressure on Milwaukee, turn to this particular coach now?
It’s hard to know. Maybe it’s the idea that he’s a “winner,” a notion that the facts simply don’t support. Maybe it’s because many see him as a “cultural” guy who can work magic in the locker room and among the stars. But that idea will draw at least as many sidelong glances as nods of approval if you suggest it to rival NBA executives and coaches. There is much to suggest that Rivers is not that “great culture builder” that so many media outlets have tried to sell us.
This view holds that Rivers has too often pushed his players under the proverbial bus rather than leading them to real success. That his greatest skill since Boston has been survival rather than success, playing the game rather than winning enough games. Ask DeAndre Jordan. Ask Ben Simmons. And now, perhaps, ask the suddenly unemployed Adrian Griffin.
Because according to The Athletic, Rivers was hired to help the rookie head coach “to serve as a veteran coaching voice to help Griffin find a path forward during the season.”
And how did Rivers help that head coach? He seems to do a Dick Cheney and use his voice to help that organization come to the conclusion that what the Bucks really needed was Doc Rivers.
That’s a real Game of Thrones thing. And it’s a reminder that Rivers has been able to go from one great situation to another: contender, contender, contender.
But what he hasn’t done is win. Not in a lasting way. Not in the playoffs.
The Bucks, like the Clippers and Sixers before them, have fallen for Rivers’ siren song. But they’re likely to learn the same lesson Philadelphia learned less than a year ago: that Doc Rivers may be great at selling the Doc Rivers idea, but in the business of coaching basketball teams he’s a mistake waiting to happen.
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