Rivers lured to Bucks by shot at championship

MILWAUKEE — When Doc Rivers flew into Dallas this week, he was planning to spend extra time with his daughter and son-in-law before he was scheduled to broadcast an ESPN game between the Mavericks and Phoenix Suns on Wednesday night.

Instead, when he checked his phone Tuesday afternoon, he had what he called “a lot of urgent messages” following the news that the Milwaukee Bucks had fired first-year coach Adrian Griffin.

To that point, Rivers said he was comfortable with his time away from coaching after being fired this past summer following three seasons as coach for the Philadelphia 76ers. He said he had been contacted several times about a coach vacancy in the time since, but he hadn’t taken the call and wouldn’t in the future — unless it was the right job.

Enter Milwaukee, where he was an All-American at Marquette in the 1980s and has his retired jersey number hanging in the rafters at the Bucks’ home arena. Then consider the team he inherits, with two superstars in Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard and a chance to win a championship.

“You know the answer. Giannis, Dame. Really, that’s the answer,” Rivers said at his introductory news conference Saturday morning. “Like, you look at their team. What is it, eight teams that have a legitimate shot [at a championship]? And I don’t know if it’s that high, but the Bucks are one of them, right?

“The other thing is the way they’re built with the veterans and their grown-ups. I thought that if you’re going to jump into this at this time of the year, this would be a type of group that you have the best opportunity to connect and change the quickest.”

Rivers, 62, was introduced at a news conference sitting next to Bucks general manager Jon Horst on Saturday morning, three days after Horst sat at the same table to talk about dismissing Griffin only 43 games into his first year as coach despite a 30-13 record. While Rivers acknowledged he and Griffin have spoken on multiple occasions — “Adrian and I are good friends, I wanted him to do well,” Rivers said — both he and Horst denied Rivers had been employed by the team before this week.

The Bucks finished the second half of a back-to-back Saturday night with a blowout win over the New Orleans Pelicans; Rivers is set to make his coaching debut on the road Monday night against the Denver Nuggets.

After Saturday’s win, Antetokounmpo spoke about his first impressions of Rivers and the expectations he set.

“You can tell he has great energy about him,” Antetokounmpo said. “From the first meeting that we had to the second meeting we had he was all what about the team, how can we keep each other accountable, how can we touch one another, how can we come together as a team, how can we move the ball — just the energy that he has, he gives you a lot of confidence.”

Lillard echoed that sentiment, saying Rivers won’t be afraid to challenge the team.

“His voice, how he’s able to motivate teams,” Lillard said. “He’s a strong voice. He’s going to demand more from our team. He’s not going to be afraid to challenge myself, he’s not going to be afraid to challenge Giannis…all the way down the line.

“I think when you’re dealing with a team that’s full of vets and as talented as we are, I think that’s something that you need if you want to reach the level that we want to reach.”

Beginning Monday, the Bucks will have 36 games remaining in the regular season before the playoffs begin.

“I’ve never done this. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, I can tell you that, just from the day-and-a-half,” Rivers said of taking over a team midseason. “It’s going to be a challenge. It’s a challenge that I’m running towards. We’ve got to get organized quickly. Can’t try to do too much too soon. We’re in the middle of a season, so we’ve got to try to keep our rhythm.

“There are changes that we have to make, there’s no doubt about that. We’ll start working on it immediately.”

Antetokounmpo said it will be a team-wide effort to get everyone on the same page.

“It’s going to take time, but the most important thing that he emphasized is to come together as a team,” Antetokounmpo said. “The more together we are as a team the faster we’ll get to where we want to get to.”

One big change Rivers noted from this job compared to his previous stops was the culture of the team. In Los Angeles and Philadelphia, Rivers said he believed he was hired to change the culture of the team as much as to coach the games. But he thought Milwaukee already had a solid foundation, it was his job to just coach.

And this will be the 25th consecutive NBA season in which Rivers will be a head coach, starting before the 1999-2000 season with the Orlando Magic. The Bucks will be the fifth franchise to hire Rivers as head coach.

“I don’t know if I have anything to prove except I want to win,” Rivers said. “I like winning. I like putting myself in those situations.

“I’ve been through everything, I really have as a coach. That’s what’s so great about coaching. There’s a lot of highs, there’s lows, and you work through them and you learn from them always. At the end of the day, this is a relationship business. Your job as a coach is to get some of the guys to do some of the things they don’t want to do.

“You’re not going to be popular all the time and that’s fine, you have to accept that when you accept a leadership role. That’s just part of it. But if you can get the buy-in and get everybody to buy in and be on the same page, then you can have some success.”