The numbers tell a clear story, and it’s one the Milwaukee Bucks can’t ignore anymore. When they fired Adrian Griffin on January 23, the team was 30-13, sitting second in the Eastern Conference with a .698 winning percentage. There were flaws, sure, but the results were strong, and the team was winning at a level that suggested continuity might have been the smarter path.
Instead, they made a change and brought in Doc Rivers, a veteran coach with a championship resume and a reputation for stabilizing teams in high-pressure situations. The expectation was simple. Take a good team and make it great. Build around Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, tighten things defensively, and make a deep playoff run.
That never happened.
Rivers went 17-19 to close the 2023-24 season, and while the Bucks still finished 49-33, they dropped to third in the East. The momentum from Griffin’s early run was gone, replaced by inconsistency.
Then came the playoffs, where Giannis went down late in the regular season, and the Bucks were eliminated in six games by the Indiana Pacers. That loss could be explained away because of injuries, but it also exposed how fragile the team had become.
The following season removed any doubt. In 2024-25, Rivers had a full offseason to implement his system, adjust rotations, and shape the roster to his style. The result was a 48-34 record, good for only the sixth seed in the East.
That’s another drop, and more importantly, another early exit. The Pacers knocked them out again, this time in five games, and the series ended with Damian Lillard tearing his Achilles.
That injury changed the direction of the franchise. Lillard was eventually waived and stretched, leaving the Bucks without the co-star they had built around Giannis. From there, the decline accelerated.
This season, after 73 games, the Bucks are 29-44 and sitting 11th in the East, officially out of playoff contention. It’s their first missed postseason in a decade, and it comes during what should still be the prime years of a generational player.
‘Giannis has played just 37 games this season, which has hurt, but even over the full Rivers stretch, he appeared in 132 of 190 games. That’s enough availability to expect a competitive team.
The overall record under Rivers now stands at 94-96.
That’s below .500 across a large sample size, and it’s a stark contrast to where the team was before the coaching change. The offense has lacked consistency, often drifting into isolation without rhythm, while the defense hasn’t returned to the level that once defined Milwaukee as a contender. More than anything, the team has struggled to establish a clear identity.
And that’s what makes the decision to fire Griffin look worse with time. At 30-13, the Bucks had room to grow, room to adjust, and room to improve without blowing things up. Instead, they made a move based on expectation rather than reality, choosing experience over results.
Since then, everything has trended in the wrong direction. The wins have dropped, the playoff success has disappeared, and now the postseason itself is out of reach.
At some point, it stops being about circumstances and starts being about decisions. And this one, based on everything that followed, looks like a mistake.
