Game 1 without Adrian Griffin as coach was a success, as the Milwaukee Bucks battled their way to a 126-116 home win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday.
Griffin was fired earlier this week and the Bucks (31-13) were guided by interim man Joe Prunty. Veteran coach Doc Rivers is set to take over soon.
“For a coach like Griff, from Day 1, everything was about togetherness,” said star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, who erupted for 35 points, 18 rebounds and 10 assists. “He was always leading this group into the direction we set at the beginning of the year. Him not being here, at the end of the day, we’re humans. It hurts everybody.
“But we’ve got to keep on moving forward. We have a goal in our head, which is to be the best basketball team that we can be.”
- Guard Damian Lillard (28 points) suggested experience in such matters should help Milwaukee. “I think our experience really worked in our favor in this situation,” he told reporters. “We’ve all experienced a lot of things. I think this was different for everybody, but I think we just understood we had a game tonight, and it was going to be a tough game against a really good team that kind of handled us the last time we played them.”
- Prunty was 21-16 with the Bucks as interim coach in 2017-18, and 2-0 with the Atlanta Hawks last season. “It’s not easy, but you do have a job to do,” he said. “That’s one of the things that we talked about as a team, just talked about, ‘Look, we still have responsibilities. We still have roles. We still have jobs that we have to do on the court.’ So you just do. You move forward. But it’s not easy. It really isn’t.”
- In case you missed it, the Bucks reportedly have trade interest in Hawks guard Dejounte Murray and Raptors guard Bruce Brown. We have that full post here.
- Griffin offered some comments about his firing, as we relayed here.
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