Bucks Have No Plans To Fire Doc Rivers

Doc Rivers is 65-53 in the regular season and 3-8 in the playoffs with the Milwaukee Bucks, who have lost to the Indiana Pacers in the first round of the postseason two years in a row. 

Despite not having any playoff success with Rivers, the Bucks have no plans to fire the veteran coach. 

“I’ve enjoyed my time with Doc immensely,” Bucks GM Jon Horst told The Athletic. “It’s one of the least established relationships I had prior to making a hire of anyone in my career so far, but he and I just continue to grow closer and closer each day.

“He’s a big-time collaborator. He has the exact same views that I do on culture building and professionalism within the organization, how you treat people, how you communicate honestly. He is a great partner in that he’ll have any tough conversation that you need to have with a player or players, and I think that’s essential in this business. And it gives you a real chance to win when stuff gets tough.

“He’s a great basketball guy. I learn from him every day. I love being around him. He’s very well-connected. So when it comes to recruiting and networking and just the different things that you can do with a roster that are necessary, he’s amazing at that as well. And so I’ve loved working with him, and he’s a basketball junkie. I’ve been amazed. No one takes more notes. I sit right behind him on the plane, and he’s watching film as soon as the game’s over. It’s the first thing he does. He’s got a video guy with him, and he just really grinds. He really works at it. He still loves the game at a high level, and he’s a champion.

“I think the reason why I still love working with Doc and I’m excited to work with Doc is because I think we have a chance to win with Doc. I think he’s a championship-level coach. He’s the right coach to get us to where we want to go.

“We haven’t had the results yet in our two years together that we wanted. But it’s been two of the most adversity-filled seasons that I’ve been part of. And we’ve had two really successful regular seasons. To go through the things that we went through, if people actually look at the facts of what we went through over two years — we still finished with a fifth seed and a third seed. Near 50 wins in both seasons. And then we lost to the team that lost in the conference finals two years ago and the team that lost in Game 7 of the finals this year. We lost to a really, really good Indiana Pacers organization that deserves everything that they’ve got. I mean, that team had an unbelievable two-year run and they beat everybody; they didn’t just beat us. 

“So I’m really proud of the last two years with Doc, and I think we’ve learned a lot. And I think it’s going to help us get to where we want to get.”