At a certain point, you are what your track record says you are. Theory and potential will always give way to practice and reality sooner or later.
For Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers, that time has finally come, if it hasn't already: his track record belies a coach who can win a championship with the right roster but struggles to maximize talent beyond a certain level. Just like the many teams before them who have made the same mistake with Rivers, the Milwaukee Bucks are quickly learning that firsthand at the worst possible time.
Since taking over midseason last year, Rivers has not solved Milwaukee’s biggest problems—if anything, some have worsened.
Damian Lillard still isn’t moving enough off the ball, Giannis Antetokounmpo isn't fully committing to the two-man game and defensively, the Bucks lack cohesion. These are issues a high-level coach should be able to scheme around, but so far, Doc Rivers hasn’t provided the answers.
The Milwaukee Bucks are floundering at the worst possible time
When the Bucks hired Rivers over a year ago, he was supposed to be the steady hand that could elevate a talented but underperforming roster to championship contention. He was brought in to fix the defense, maximize Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard’s partnership and bring the kind of veteran leadership that could navigate the pressures of a deep playoff run.
Instead, the Milwaukee Bucks are still searching for answers, and Rivers’ inability to adapt to the modern game is becoming harder to ignore. The hope was that he’d be the missing piece. So far, he’s been anything but.
In theory, the Milwaukee Bucks are a team built around Giannis Antetokounmpo’s generational talent, but their playtype stats on NBA.com/stats paint a more nuanced picture of where this team stands.
Across the league, the Bucks’ transition offense ranks in just the 52nd percentile, a surprising number for a team with Giannis. They often slow things down to set up their half-court offense, which limits their opportunities to run.
Their spot-up shooting (79th percentile) is also a concern, as it’s not elite enough to maximize Giannis’ drive-and-kick game. Even while they rank 86th in roll man plays and 100th percentile in handoff plays, they're more often than not middle of the pack across all their playtype stats.
Obviously, that's a problem for a team that has Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo on the roster. To make matters worse, it's looking like it's as much an issue of identity as it is execution. The proof is in the pudding on this one; the Bucks’ offense, once expected to be a juggernaut, is sputtering late in games.
Milwaukee ranks 28th in the league in fourth-quarter scoring with just 26.2 points per game. The eye test proves this to be true: when the team sticks to its guns, they've routinely been out-executed in crunch time once teams get a feel for what they're all about.
Rivers was supposed to bring structure, but all too often, the Milwaukee Bucks revert to isolations or rushed shots when it matters most. Damian Lillard isn’t moving enough off the ball, Giannis won’t consistently set screens to embrace the two-man game and the team’s offensive and defensive schemes feel outdated.
On the opposite side of the ball, things aren't much better. The Bucks’ biggest defensive weaknesses are still mostly in transition, where they finish at the 13th percentile in the league, and pick-and-roll defense (17th percentile). They struggle to get back in transition, often giving up easy baskets, and their drop coverage scheme, coupled with immobile big men, has been exploited all season. Opposing guards feast on pull-up jumpers and floaters, while bigs like Lopez struggle to contain quicker players on the perimeter.
Simply put, they're not playing like a well-coached team at all, and you'd be hard-pressed to make the argument that they looked worse playing under former head coach Mike Budenholzer. While they're playing much better with their new additions, they're also not playing up to the championship expectations placed on them thus far.
Obviously, this team has a lot of problems that have nothing to do with coaching. They still don't know who their third scoring option should be in the pecking order. The rotation still doesn't feel set with the exit of Andre Jackson Jr. and uncertainty at the starting shooting guard spot. But at the end of the day, their problems are more systemic than individual, and that's on coaching.
Rivers won a championship with the 2008 Boston Celtics, but that was 17 years ago now with a team loaded with Hall of Famers in their primes.
Since then, he’s developed a pattern of struggling to adjust while failing to bring an identity to the teams he's coached. There’s a reason Rivers was available midseason after being fired by Philadelphia. He’s simply the epitome of a high-floor, low-ceiling coach at this stage—one who might be capable of keeping a team decently competitive in the regular season but rarely the difference in a deep playoff run.
It’s still early, but the warning signs are there, and perhaps they have been all along. The Bucks hired Rivers to elevate them beyond the first-round flameout that cost Adrian Griffin his job. But as more teams have learned over the years, Rivers can only take you so far. As the season wears on, it’s becoming clear that Doc Rivers has a ceiling as a coach in today’s NBA, and the Milwaukee Bucks might have made a mistake hiring him.
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