BUCKS FIRE AN NBA TITLE COACH, HIRE A BUST AND NOW WANT … DOC RIVERS?

A team that acquired Damian Lillard to pair with Giannis Antetokounmpo is making midseason chaos, firing Adrian Griffin after 43 games while oddly hoping to pull a recent failure off ESPN’s booth crew

     Wasn’t compassion the answer? When Mike Budenholzer lost his brother in a car accident, only two seasons after winning an NBA title for the Milwaukee Bucks, we might have suggested patience from management. He coached one of the league’s best defensive units. Miami won a first-round playoff series anyway, not a horrible loss in that the Heat advanced to the Finals last June.

     “Coach Bud is going through a lot,’’ said a former assistant, Darvin Ham, who was coaching the Lakers.

     But the Bucks went ahead and fired Budenholzer, which demanded a paramount hire for a team about to acquire Damian Lillard for a historic inside-outside crunch with Giannis Antetokounmpo. Take your pick. They hired Adrian Griffin, who had spent 15 seasons as an assistant coach for five league clubs. The community sort of shrugged, wondering how it would work, until a mid-October day when a valued coach on his staff, Terry Stotts, told off Griffin during practice and quit.

     This was the first signal that Budenholzer’s replacement didn’t know what he was doing. Suddenly, all eyes were on general manager Jon Horst, who couldn’t dump a championship coach and hire a misfit. The Bucks are supposed to win multiple banners. Suddenly, the Boston Celtics had improved themselves at the expense of Horst, who sent Jrue Holiday to Portland in the trade for Lillard and saw Brad Stevens swoop up the splendid two-way guard. All the while, Philadelphia had improved with Nick Nurse as coach and Joel Embiid setting scoring records and James Harden elsewhere, in Los Angeles. Under Griffin, the Bucks’ defensive efficiency had slid from top-five last season to 22nd.

     How would the Bucks avoid another postseason crash? Horst responded by calling Doc Rivers and asking him to consult Griffin. What we had was a basketball issue along with a journalism problem. A recent league champion wants Rivers to come from nowhere and help the cause? And he’s doing so as a member of ESPN’s top broadcasting team covering games. In yet another comedy at the network, Jeff Van Gundy was replaced during layoffs as a popular member of the crew, which led Mark Jackson to leave. Doris Burke was in. Rivers was in.

     Now, Doc is trying to save the Bucks? Did owners Wes Edens and Jimmy Haslam contact ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro? Or does a reporting conflict-of-interest no longer matter in sports? Tuesday, in an outrageous admission of front-office guilt, Horst announced Griffin’s firing after 43 games. And who do they want to bring in? Rivers, who failed with the Clippers and the 76ers and hasn’t been an outright success since winning a title with the Celtics in 2008. He is 62. His postseason numbers are pathetic. And the Bucks desire him anyway, with less than three months before the playoffs, to fix the pick-and-roll and drive defenses in a rush.

     The network is a bigger mess. Van Gundy is a senior consultant for the Celtics and won’t be returning to the booth, unless it’s to doink chairman Jimmy Pitaro. Who’s left? JJ Redick makes sense, but — this is how networks think — he’s white when Burke and play-by-play announcer Mike Breen are white. Richard Jefferson? Kendrick Perkins? Or, what the hell, 90-year-old Hubie Brown, who is white but beyond us all?

     From 2018 to 2023, Budenholzer was the league’s winningest coach. Without Holiday and a hit-and-miss Khris Middleton, the Bucks are waiting on Giannis and Dame to lead glory. Did Horst or anyone else decide they would meld so quickly when the Celtics flaunt Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown as an All-Star tandem? When the Sixers have Tyrese Maxey fitting perfectly with Embiid, who one-upped Wilt Chamberlain with a 70-point evening? Does anyone see the Bucks defending those teams? They’ll score. They won’t deny.

     “This was a difficult decision to make during the season,” Horst said. “We are working immediately toward hiring our next head coach. We thank Coach Griffin for his hard work and contributions to the team.”

     When he dismissed Budenholzer, only Steve Kerr remains as an NBA head coach after winning a championship the last four years. Don’t blame Horst and the owners for everything. After the first-round ouster and the coach’s firing, Giannis posted a tweet that said, “I’m tired of the disrespect. I’m coming.” Did he contribute to the change? Last summer, he signed a three-year, $186 million extension to remain in Milwaukee. Did he also champion Griffin over Nurse?

     The Greek Freak has one title. He won’t be leaving. After a loss to Houston two weeks ago, Antetokounmpo said in a lengthy diatribe, “Now, defensively, we have to have a plan. What is our strategy? Are we going to give a lot of open 3s? Are we going to let them get in the paint? When they go in the post, are we going to stay with ours and play one-on-one? What is our strategy? Right now, we are giving everything. We are giving the 3s. We are giving straight line drives. We are letting guys play in the post and get comfortable. We’re giving offensive rebounds.”

     So Doc Rivers will clean it up? I’d call Mike Budenholzer.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.