Expect better Bucks vs. Denver
An entire coaching tenure for one of the most successful teams in the NBA miraculously started and finished without ever crossing paths with the Nuggets.
When the Bucks visited Denver on Monday night for the first of two regularly scheduled matchups this season, they were feeling their way around the proverbial dark. Doc Rivers was out from behind the scorer’s table, where he spent the first half of this season calling games for ESPN, and back on the sideline after an unexpectedly brief hiatus from coaching.
“It’s gonna take a minute,” he said before the game, a hardfought 113-107 Nuggets win. “… Really what I’m trying to do is slowly, really slowly, put in some of my stuff and simplify some of their stuff — which is our stuff now. One thing you don’t want to do, and we’re so fearful of doing it, is paralyzing their brain, and now they’re thinking. So it’s just gonna take a while. That’s another reason why you see the value of training camp.”
Coaching changes in the middle of a season are typically warranted by a team’s win-loss record, whether in relation to preseason expectations or otherwise. This was not a typical coaching change. The Bucks decided to shake up their season in spite of a 30-13 start under Adrian Griffin,
whose tenure lasted 233 days after the previous firing of Mike Budenholzer.
The next roll of the dice: Rivers, who was coaching Joel Embiid and the 76ers nine months ago. Milwaukee is the fifth team Rivers has helmed, perhaps making him the ideal fit as an antithesis to the first-time head coach Griffin was.
Short leashes aren’t unprecedented in the Giannis Antetokounmpo era; Budenholzer was two summers removed from coaching the Bucks to their first NBA championship in 50 years when he got canned.
That could also be a factor in the Rivers allure. The
62-year-old is a coaching staple in the NBA by now, equipped with enough experience to understand the urgency of his position. Milwaukee’s urgency has been especially palpable since its blockbuster trade for Damian Lillard late in the offseason.
“I feel bad for Adrian Griffin. That’s the first thing I would say,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said when asked about the major change on a fellow championship contender. “Adrian Griffin, first-year head coach. But like every other coach in the NBA, we all understand what you sign up for. … If you’re looking for security, don’t become a coach. So I think Adrian probably understood that, but tough to see a guy who was in his second or third place in the East get let go so early.”
Malone has experienced a mixture of tolerances for losing throughout his career. In his first head coaching job, he didn’t make it through his second full season with the Sacramento Kings. Then patience prevailed in Denver as it took four years for Malone to reach the playoffs before slowly climbing toward the 2023 title.
After touching on Griffin, the ninth-year Nuggets coach continued that Riv- ers’ résumé speaks for itself. Malone and his coach- ing staff shared smiles and fond handshakes with Rivers after the final buzzer later that night.
“On one hand, I hate to see Adrian not get the chance to coach this team,” Malone said. “And on the other hand, it’s great to see Doc — no disrespect to his commentating ability, but it’s good to see him back on the sideline doing what he’s very effective at.”
Rivers outlined a hectic first shootaround Monday, involving confusion over terminologies that had changed between Buden- holzer and Griffin. When the Nuggets next see the Bucks, Feb. 12 in Milwaukee, the newcomer will likely have a better grip on such technicalities. And a better grip on the team’s DNA. The Bucks are targeting better defensive analytics and increased usage of the Lillard-antetokounmpo pick-and-roll game, including all its potential offshoots involving Khris Middleton.
“It’s been effective, but it should be dominant, in my opinion,” Rivers said pregame at Ball Arena. “We did a lot of two-man work today. You won’t probably see a lot of it tonight But it was clear. I think the whole team pretty much got what we did, after 20 minutes of doing the same thing: It’s important for us.”
Whatever final form the Bucks take in pursuit of dethroning the Nuggets, Rivers’ fingerprints will be all over it by the next time they match up.
“It’s really hard to come in out of left field and completely change what they’re doing,” Malone said. “And I wouldn’t change a whole lot. I mean, they’re playing pretty well.”