It's official: Taylor Jenkins is the Bucks' new head coach after the front office went through the process in a hurry. That should be good news to Bucks fans everywhere, because if the Milwaukee Bucks went from Doc Rivers to Billy Donovan, they would not have been pivoting—they’d be doubling down on the exact same idea that just failed.
Donovan is a respected coach. He’s steady, experienced, and proven enough to keep a team competitive. But that’s also the issue. At this stage, you more or less know what you’re getting: structure, professionalism, and a ceiling that rarely stretches beyond it.
That’s the same bet Milwaukee made with Doc Rivers—and it led to a team that felt predictable, slow to adjust, and ultimately capped when it mattered most.
Jenkins is the best possible coach the Bucks could have right now
The Bucks don’t need steady right now. They need to be disruptive. And Jenkins provides them exactly that, no matter what lies ahead in their future as an organization. Jon Horst going straight for the one candidate that made sense instead of looking for a bigger pool of options was, whether intentional or unintentional, nothing short of genius.
If the coaching search had stretched out any longer, the Bucks front office might have considered taking on a more expansive search among the available candidates. And the ownership group might have gone ahead and vetoed any decision Horst and company might have made, just like they did with Rivers.
This roster is aging, flawed, and in clear need of reinvention around Giannis Antetokounmpo. Hiring another veteran coach with a long resume but limited tactical evolution doesn’t solve that. It just maintains it. You’re not unlocking new layers of a Giannis-and-shooters offense partnership with conservative schemes and familiar habits. You’re hoping experience smooths over problems that require actual innovation.
That’s a dangerous gamble when your window is this fragile.
Look at the league. The teams pushing the envelope aren’t leaning on recycled names—they’re finding coaches who bring fresh ideas, who experiment, who aren’t locked into patterns built a decade ago. The likes of JJ Redick, Mitch Johnson, and Joe Mazzulla are showing us just that in the playoffs right now. Milwaukee already tried the “safe pair of hands” approach. It gave them a high floor and a very visible ceiling.
Going to Billy Donovan would feel like choosing comfort over upside in the same way that going for Rivers was the easy veteran choice in the wake of Adrian Griffin's firing.
Giving Giannis a familiar face might convince him to stay in town
This offseason isn’t about staying respectable. It’s about convincing Giannis that this franchise still has a path to contention. That requires bold thinking, not familiar faces. It requires a coach who can maximize unconventional lineups, lean into pace and space, and build something that doesn’t look like a watered-down version of what already failed.
Donovan or any other coach available on the market at the time of the hire might raise the floor in theory. But the Bucks don’t need their floor raised. They need their ceiling blown open. Hiring another version of Doc Rivers would not have done that in the slightest.
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