Doc Rivers Has Opportunity to Silence Critics With Bucks

Maximizing the All-Star pairing of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard and quelling the postseason issues will be among Rivers’s top priorities this season.

I’m pro Doc Rivers.

I’m pro Ubuntu, pro gravelly voice, pro never-ending jokes about Rivers not being a real doctor. I’m pro Boston Celtics championship in 2008, the one they could have won in ’09 and the one they should have won in ’10. If you think about it, knee injuries to Kevin Garnett and Kendrick Perkins are all that really stand in the way of Rivers having more championships than Chuck Daly.

Or something like that.

I understand I’m in the minority. These days, Rivers is as polarizing as a political candidate. His regular-season record since his Celtics days (510–290) is terrific. His postseason record (47–47) is not. His teams have blown 3–1 leads. They have blown 3–2 leads. Rivers’s record in series where his team has won three games is 16–33. In Game 7s, he is 6–10. He has coached several championship-level teams since leaving Boston. He has not won one. Rasheed Wallace, who played one season for Rivers in Boston, said of Rivers, “when he got a 3–1 lead, he fold like a lawn chair.”

I don’t care. I like Rivers for this job. Is Rivers among the best X’s and O’s coaches in the NBA? Probably not, though you have to be decent to have as many top-10 offenses and defenses as Rivers has had. Has Rivers had postseason failures? Oh, yeah—big ones, including Philadelphia’s collapse against Boston last spring. But his Celtics did win a title—winning a couple of Game 7s along the way—and pinning the postseason problems the Los Angeles Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers suffered on Rivers’s watch entirely on Rivers ignores some unbelievably awful individual play some of those teams had.

Rivers will debut as Bucks coach Monday :: Benny Sieu/USA TODAY Sports

On Saturday, the Bucks formally introduced Rivers as the team’s new head coach. He called it a “dream” to be back in Milwaukee, where he played his college ball at Marquette. He unpacked the origins of the Bucks’ interest, which included turning his oft-neglected phone on during a social trip to Dallas to find a string of messages from Bucks general manager Jon Horst. “Urgent messages,” Horst cracked. He acknowledged the challenge of taking over a team midyear (“Probably have three or four days of practice the rest of the season,” Rivers said), the weaknesses with the defense and stressed the importance of the team finding its identity.

“If you’re going to have ‘Fear the Deer,’ ” Rivers said, “you got to fear the deer.”

He said playing in Milwaukee was always on his bucket list, joking that he’s still irked that then-Bucks coach Don Nelson didn’t draft him in 1983. “Drafted Randy Breuer,” Rivers said, smiling. “Right choice.” He spoke of the thrill to be back in the city (“I’m not here if I didn’t go to Marquette,” Rivers said), his relationship with Golden Eagles head coach Shaka Smart and the responsibility he felt taking over a team with championship expectations.

“I’m going to use a line from a coach that I know well, Bill Belichick,” Rivers said. “If you can coach a team where the expectations are, if you land the plane and you get off the plane there’s a parade, but if you don’t land it, it’s a crash, then you got the right team.”

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He talked about relationships which, historically, has been Rivers’s strength. There have been some high-profile conflicts—Chris Paul in Los Angeles and James Harden in Philadelphia—but Rivers’s ability to connect stars is proven. In Boston, Rivers got three All-NBA talents (Paul Pierce, Garnett, Ray Allen) on the same page and a mercurial point guard (Rajon Rondo) to lead them. He navigated the Clippers through the Donald Sterling drama and guided Philly to 49 wins in the season Ben Simmons tried to nuke.

“At the end of the day, this is a relationship business,” Rivers said. “And your job as a coach is to get some of the guys to do some of the things they don’t want to do. And you’re not going to be popular all the time and that’s fine. You have to accept that when we accept the leadership role, that’s just part of it. But if you can get the buy-in and get everybody to buy in and be on the same page, then you can have some success.”

Getting that buy-in from the Bucks’ two stars—Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard—will be critical. The Antetokounmpo/Lillard partnership has been good. Milwaukee is 32–14 and Antetokounmpo and Lillard are headed to the All-Star Game as starters. But it could be better. Rivers spent part of his first day showing Antetokounmpo film of a play that used to kill Rivers’s 76ers teams, one Antetokounmpo has not run much this season.

“The key is to get them both playing at their ultimate level and making it so they can do that together,” Rivers said. “And not just offensively but defensively as a group. And that can be done. That will be done. Just being around them, [and] I was around the facility yesterday, they’re all willing. They just need to figure out how.”

Frankly, Rivers, or someone like him, was who the Bucks should have gone after last spring. Adrian Griffin is a fine coach, but asking a first-time head coach to take over a championship team with a small-ish title window was an impossible task. There’s a certain confidence and a decisiveness experienced head coaches have. Players can sense it. Griffin, it appeared, didn’t have it. Rivers does.

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Which is no guarantee it will work, of course. At least not this season. Rivers will formally take over Monday, when the Bucks begin a grueling five-game road trip in Denver. “I should have waited until after the All-Star break,” Rivers said. Wouldn’t matter. Milwaukee has the third-toughest schedule in the second half of the season, per Tankathon.com. An early February four-game homestand will see the Bucks welcome the Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat.

It’s a challenge. And Rivers is up for it. He’s good on TV. But he’s not built for it. “I was bored,” Rivers said. He enjoyed his time away. But he never really wanted to be away from it. “I would call coaches just to screw with ’em and talk,” Rivers said. He insists he has nothing to prove but the Bucks have handed him an opportunity to silence those who believe he does.

“I like winning,” Rivers said. “I like putting myself in those situations. And I’ve failed and I’ve won. Man, I tell you, winning is something that you can’t produce. Winning it all, it’s like having a blood transfusion with everybody in a group, in an organization. And once you get that in, you want another one. And that’s my pursuit.”

The Bucks thought they had the coach to lead this team in Griffin.

In Rivers, they do.