Milwaukee Bucks: Darvin Ham reflects on bubble, disappointing playoff exit and his future

Appearing on George Karl’s ‘Truth + Basketball’ podcast, Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach Darvin Ham reflected on the team’s time in the bubble and more.

Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach Darvin Ham has been a busy man these days as he remains up for a head coaching job in the NBA. But that hasn’t stopped him from making the rounds on the podcast circuit.

Ham was the most recent guest on George Karl’s ‘Truth + Basketball’ podcast that touched on a multitude of topics relating to the Bucks’ season, the season restart, life in the bubble and his standing in the ongoing coaching carousel around the league.

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Kicking it all off, Ham discussed life in the bubble and how the strict conditions to ensure the health of players, coaches and league officials affected the on-court product in the season restart:

"“We have a situation where the rules of engagement have all changed. There’s no fans, you’re engaging with your opponents constantly around the property within the bubble. Thank God for the technology we have because it could have been really bad having a bubble during ’70s, ’80s or ’90s. The fact that you have FaceTime, you can get on Zoom, at least you can see a face (of loved ones).But the art of touch, where human beings have an opportunity to touch one another and fellowship physically and be in each other’s presence, in terms of family, that was missing. They opened up the gate, so to speak, to allow players to bring in their family members and all of that., but every individual is going to handle that differently. There were articles written on ESPN about Paul George going through anxiety and depression because he wasn’t seeing his kids, seeing his wife and whatnot. Everybody felt that, it wasn’t just the players. We had front office people there, coaches. Even the league officials, they’re there to make sure everything goes smoothly. You have people in an environment with all of their co-workers, but none of their families, at least not physically. And you need that. There’s no way you can maneuver around that."

That eventually led to Ham touching on the Bucks’ disappointing performance in the playoffs and their early exit where they fell to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. To Ham, though, he found nothing wrong in the process of how they played:

"“In terms of us not achieving our goal, in hindsight, it’s always 20/20. This league is a make or miss league. I thought we got great shots. Giannis included his teammates, just how we coached him up to do. He’s an unselfish guy. He’s going to go hard and run through a wall for you and that’s why he is who he is. But we were all on the same page. In saying that, we were all on the same page professionally, but I think history is going to look back and say we were the most impactful team in that situation by far based on the stance we took as human beings.”"

While the Bucks’ playoff run ended in disappointment, their historic Game 5 walkout will certainly stand the test of time in the fight against racism and social injustice. Ham discussed the team’s motivations on that day and how the players collectively used their platform for something that went beyond the game of basketball:

"“The totality of where our minds were, for us to go out there and march for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in Milwaukee. Meet up at the facility, meet up at the arena and go out there and march where everybody is involved. There was police out there marching with us. Thousands and thousands of people standing up for social justice and for this incident to take place in our backyard, we just felt a certain type of way. It happened in real-time, it was nothing that was pre-planned. George Hill just didn’t feel comfortable going out there and competing in light of those circumstances and our guys stood with him in solidarity. I know I wasn’t in the mood to go out there and do anything at all.The biggest thing is, it’s funny how people manipulate the message of what you’re trying to do, our thing wasn’t really a boycott. When you boycott, you’re choosing to not to do something in the particular situation you’re in. We still wanted to compete, make no mistake about it. But people talk about using their platform and we used our platform to show people we can push pause on commerce and talk about culture. What’s going in our culture where a certain ethnicity of people are constantly getting shot down and mishandled in terms of bad policing? Something has to be done about this.”"

Lastly, as he has been a popular coaching candidate in this year’s coaching carousel, Ham touched on his ongoing prospects and the fallback of staying in a golden situation like he has in Milwaukee, should he not get a head coaching job this fall:

"“No one knows the timing, no one can pinpoint the time. Going into a situation where you have to present to teams how organized you are, your IQ and hopefully that matches up because a lot of times, the people who are hiring you have a different sense of how they want to play than you played and have success with…When you’re dealing with human beings, you’re going to be dealing with different ideologies and philosophies, so I try not to put too much weight on trying to predict how someone is going to perceive me. I’m just going to put my work in, unveil to them what has made me successful and the programs I have been a part of and allow them to make a choice. If they pursue me, great. If they don’t, hell, my landing spot is as good as any, if not the best, in terms of my consolation prize is going back to Milwaukee and then going to compete for another championship next year. Hell, I’ll take that any day of the week and twice on Sunday.”"

I recommend listening to the full podcast to hear more of Ham’s thoughts on the game of basketball and beyond. Meanwhile, we’ll stay tuned to whether Ham does end up leaving Milwaukee this offseason for his first NBA head coaching gig.