Since winning the NBA Championship in 2021, the head coach position for the Milwaukee Bucks has been a bit of a revolving door. If you count Joe Prunty, the franchise is currently on their fourth head coach in four seasons. They actually had three different head coaches in the 2023/24 season. Again, you have to count Joe Prunty for that math to add up.
This is a franchise that boasts one of the best players in the league and consistently makes the NBA Playoffs. At the same time, all of that effort has only resulted in one chip during the Giannis Antetokounmpo era, leaving fans of the Bucks wondering what's going wrong. The Denver Nuggets are in a shockingly similar situation with Nikola Jokic.
Over the past few seasons, the Bucks front office has been quick to pull the trigger on firing head coaches. This was especially true of Adrian Griffin, who was fired 43 games in to the 2023/24 season despite the team having a record of 30 wins and 13 losses under his leadership. It's enough to make one wonder how long current head coach Doc Rivers has to fix things.
The Bucks keep firing coaches
This pattern started long before Adrian Griffin's short tenure. Hired in 2008, Scott Skiles left the head coach position part way through the 2012/13 season. Jim Boylan covered the duties for the rest of that campaign with Larry Drew taking over the position for 2013/14. He was one and done in the job, and was replaced by Jason Kidd starting with the 2014/15 season.
Kidd would last until the 2017/18 season when he was turfed early in 2018. Oddly enough, Joe Prunty would step in as head coach for the rest of that season. That's when they brought in Mike Budenholzer and everything seemed good. He won Coach of the Year in 2019 and coached the Bucks to a title in 2021, their first championship since 1971.
Then, Budenholzer was gone at the end of the 2022/23 season and was replaced by Adrian Griffin for 2023/24. As previously mentioned, he only lasted 43 games before his firing and was briefly replaced by Joe Prunty before Doc Rivers took over for the rest of the season. Now, Doc is the head coach of the Bucks, though that might change sooner rather than later if he can't get the team back to the finals in short order.
Why the Bucks keep firing coaches
There are always reasons why head coaches get fired. Some are obvious, while others are behind the scenes and never get made public. In the case of Budenholzer, it reputedly came down to his inability to adapt his coaching style. That being said, it's not hard to imagine that early exits from the playoffs in the next two seasons after the title win played a big role in that decision.
Griffin is a whole different situation. The roughly half a season he coached produced wins but it also produced a lot of on court strife. Giannis, in particular, appeared to have several issues with Griffin, publicly voicing his concerns about the coaching without ever naming the head coach directly. This often came up after bad losses to teams the Bucks should have been able to beat.
The reality is that the NBA is a players-first league, not a coaches-first league. If there's an issue between a star player and a coach, the front office is going to side with their star. Fans pay to watch Giannis dunk, not Adrian Griffin draw on a white board during huddles. At the same time, consistency at head coach is kind of important to winning titles and that has definitely held the Bucks back.
Former coach Adrian Griffin wasn't given a real chance
Adrian Griffin's firing was just another in a long line of coaching mistakes for the Bucks. Some of them shouldn't have been fired and some should never have been hired in the first place. Griffin was obviously at odd with Giannis, meaning building a trusting relationship would have been difficult. But it wasn't impossible. The Bucks just didn't give Adrian the opportunity to work it out.
If they had allowed him some real time, Griffin could have become a great head coach. He was willing to take chance and seemed open to listening to his players. It's impossible to know what would have happened had the Griffin era continued.
What is likely is that turmoil and inconsistency at the head coaching position has left a bad taste in Antetokounmpo's mouth, potentially fueling a desire to leave the Bucks behind in search of a more stable opportunity.
This was Griffin's first time in this role. He had been in the NBA for 15 years prior to that as an assistant coach for various teams, but that's not the same as being head coach. Griffin himself was a rookie.
He needed time and support from the front office to develop into the role while also building a professional rapport with his players. That's not going to happen in 43 games. If the Bucks wanted an experienced head coach, that's who they should have hired in the first place. They eventually did.
History tends to repeat itself for the Bucks
Doc Rivers has been an NBA head coach since 1999, outside of a couple of brief hiatuses, and was awarded Coach of the Year in 2000 for his work with the Orlando Magic. He led the Celtics to a title in 2008 and the Bucks to a NBA Cup championship in 2024. He definitely has the credentials to hold a position like head coach.
At the same time, the Bucks have been knocked out of the first round of the playoffs two years in a row by the Pacers during his tenure. Given how quickly the Bucks fire head coaches, Rivers is lucky if he has one more season to turn this around before he's looking for a new gig.
Winning the NBA Cup likely bought him some time, but not much. The Giannis era clock is running out quickly, and this franchise wants another title with the Greek Freak on the roster badly.
This is a tough league for head coaches. The front office, the players, the owners, and the fans are all happy to heap blame on them when things are going wrong but rarely seem to offer praise when things are going well.
Given Griffin's short tenure and the thin ice Rivers is skating on, it's not hard to imagine another head coaching change is coming to the Bucks in the near future. Maybe the franchise should just hire Joe Prunty. They seem to like him.