Ever since Doc Rivers became the head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks partway through the 2023-24 campaign, the team has experienced little success. Milwaukee went 17-19 with Rivers at the helm to finish the regular season and then was booted in the first round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs by the Indiana Pacers.
So far in the 2024-25 regular season, the Bucks have won just two of their 10 regular-season contests and own the second-worst record of any team in the Eastern Conference. Milwaukee’s only two wins of the season so far have come against an injury-riddled Philadelphia 76ers team and a rebuilding Utah Jazz squad.
According to The Athletic’s Sam Amick, rival executives around the league are wondering if Rivers will end up going from the team’s leader from the sidelines to working a role in its front office if the Bucks continue to stack up losses.
“With that in mind, I’ll leave you with this: What if this sort of play continues?” Amick wrote. “Is anyone going to be in peril in season, or does it become a situation where it all gets resolved in the summer. We all know what the noise might look like at that time if that’s the case.
“The Giannis [Antetokounmpo] talk around the league would be front and center, but questions about [Damian] Lillard’s long-term wishes would be a focal point as well. [John] Horst showed serious interest in the Detroit Pistons job last summer, only to be denied permission by the Bucks. So what does his future hold? There are rival executives who wonder if Rivers might wind up in the Bucks’ front office down the line. They can fix all of that messiness by winning, but that’s proving to be quite the challenging task.”
It has been quite a long time since Rivers has coached an NBA team to a significant amount of playoff success. He was the head coach of the Boston Celtics the last time he helped lead a squad to a conference finals appearance. The Celtics were led by a quartet of Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, and they reached the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals, where they lost to LeBron James and the Miami Heat in seven games.
To boot, Rivers’ tenures as the head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers were full of heartbreaking playoff exits.
For instance, in his final season coaching the Clippers, Los Angeles held a 3-1 series lead in its second-round matchup against the Denver Nuggets and seemed primed to reach the Western Conference Finals for what would have been the first time in franchise history. But the Clippers still lost that series in seven games.
Fast forward to the 2021 NBA Playoffs, his first playoff run as the head coach of the 76ers, and Philadelphia lost the deciding Game 7 of its second-round series against the Atlanta Hawks at Wells Fargo Center.
When accounting for Rivers’ history of coming up short in the playoffs as a head coach ever since his Celtics earned a title in 2008, perhaps it would be in Milwaukee’s best interest to change his role with the team in the near future.
