Doc Rivers is the Worst Head Coach in NBA History

I constantly try to make Deadseriousness stand out from the crowd. Zag when they zig. Or vice versa. Whatever. I would’ve loved nothing more than to see the Milwaukee Bucks hire Doc Rivers as their new head and coach and write an interesting article on how Doc is a smart hire and defensive coverages and blah blah.

But I can’t do it. I refuse to pretend like this scammer is a good hire for ANY professional basketball team, especially one that’s trying to win a championship.

What Happened With Adrian Griffin?

This week, the Milwaukee Bucks fired head coach, Adrian Griffin, 43 games into his first ever season as a coach. And only a few months away from Giannis Antetokounmpo personally vouching for Griffin to be hired in the first place.

The Bucks were 30-13 and 2nd in the Eastern Conference. But it wasn’t going nearly as well as their record looks. Milwaukee went 30-13 just off the strength of Giannis and Dame playing against the Wizards and Pistons and Hawks every night. This team was winning games despite having no idea how to play defense.

In January, the Bucks had the 27th-ranked defense. Worse than the Wizards or Hornets. They lost 135-95 to the Cleveland Cavaliers. They gave up 142 to the Pacers, 132 to the Jazz, 143 to the Kings and 141 to the DETROIT PISTONS.

The Bucks won the 2021 NBA championship primarily from dominating on the defensive end of the floor. And this season, teams have been doing whatever they want against them. You walk onto the Fiserv Forum court and you suddenly turn into a Harlem Globetrotter going against the Washington Generals. Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers had Milwaukee in hell during the NBA In-Season Tournament.

There was a 0% chance Adrian Griffin was going to lead them to a championship regardless of their regular season record. Griffin didn’t properly prepare his roster to successfully play defense on a nightly basis and his players didn’t believe he was capable of improving. His biggest failure was his inability to get the team to align with his vision which created strange on-court chemistry issues where everyone on the team looked like they didn’t trust each other.

Which makes it even more insane to hire Doc Rivers as his replacement.

What’s wrong with Doc Rivers?

Hiring Doc Rivers to fix your team chemistry is like hiring Hitler to run your company’s diversity initiative.

I’d sooner trust Casey Anthony to babysit my child than I would Doc Rivers to lead my team to an NBA Finals

If the Milwaukee Bucks have spent the season pouring gasoline all over their locker room, Doc Rivers is walking in with a flamethrower.

And it’s not as if Rivers’s failures happened a decade ago.

He was literally JUST fired this summer after blowing a 3-2 lead to the Boston Celtics where his Sixers looked terrified. It’s the head coach’s job to make his team focused, prepared and poised for big playoff games and all of Doc’s teams slowly throughout a playoff series, lose their shit, completely alter their playing style and meltdown under the pressure.

When the players are nervous, it doesn’t help to look over at their head coach crying to the referees about every call and looking equally anxious on the sidelines.

This is the same Doc Rivers who took over the Sixers in the 2020-21 season, helped lead them to the best record in the East, watched his team get embarrassed by the Atlanta Hawks in the 2nd round and then immediately threw Ben Simmons under the bus as if Ben wasn’t their most reliable on-ball defender all season.

Shit, AFTER HE WAS FIRED BY THE SIXERS, Doc Rivers went on Bill Simmons’s podcast and blamed James Harden for the team’s failure.

If the Bucks didn’t trust Adrian Griffin, how could they trust a coach who has no problem blaming his players for playoff losses?

The regular season is whatever. The Bucks will be fine regardless of who the head coach is. Giannis and Dame are two of the greatest basketball players in the history of history. They are more than capable of winning 50 games with me as the coach.

But when the playoffs start and the pressure is at its peak, Doc Rivers will be a deer in the headlights all series and then blame the players for his inability to make adjustments or get his team focused.

Here’s a cute little Doc Rivers stat: his teams have a 16-33 record when they have 3 wins in a 7-game series.

If someone put a gun to your mother’s head and said “I’m going to blow her brains out if Doc Rivers doesn’t win this Game 7”, you’d have to start calling funeral homes by halftime.

It’s fucking absurd to hire Doc Rivers in this specific situation. Like, if the Washington Wizards wanted to hire Doc Rivers to build a program and culture from scratch, cool. I wouldn’t bat an eye.

But this is a win-now, veteran-heavy team looking for a championship that decided to hire a first-time head coach and that first-time head coach showed how unqualified he was for the position. And it is insane to rectify that problem with a different but arguably bigger problem in Doc Rivers.

I will never understand Doc Rivers’s reputation as this ultimate people-person and charming communicator when I was alive when those Chris Paul/Blake Griffin Los Angeles Clippers teams all hated each other and crumbled to dust every time the playoffs started.

This wonderful, charming motivator who ran Ben Simmons out of Philadelphia and talked about James Harden like he was some bum as we currently watch Harden dramatically raise the Clippers ceiling and revolutionize their offense.

Doc Rivers fucking sucks and there’s a 0% chance the Milwaukee Bucks even make it to the NBA Finals with Doc as their head coach. The man won a Coach of the Year trophy in 2000. 24 years ago. ADRIAN GRIFFIN WAS A ROOKIE THAT YEAR. Hang it up, brother.

Get Doc Rivers out of my life.

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