Doc Rivers Ends Bucks Tenure That Was A Huge Waste Of Everyone’s Time

The Milwaukee Bucks fired Doc Rivers on Monday. What a terrible time they have all had. The Bucks failed to advance out of the first round of the playoffs in**** two previous tries under Rivers; this season, beset by injuries to Giannis Antetokounmpo and showing that characteristic idealessness of a Rivers-coached team, they played to a miserable 32-win record, missed the play-in, wound up in a public fight with their best player, and entered recrimination season well before the close of their official one.

Rivers took the job in January 2024, in what looked at the time like a midseason coup d'état: The Bucks had hired Rivers to be an advisor to rookie head coach Adrian Griffin, but Griffin was fired after 43 games, despite coaching the Bucks to a record of 30–13. I cannot confidently accuse Rivers of having played the scheming vizier, but his time as head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers had ended months earlier with grinding frustration and apocalyptic vibes, and a side door might've been his only realistic route back into the big chair with a real-deal contender. In any case, as the prize for a few months of no official duties under general manager Jon Horst and Milwaukee's owners, Rivers found himself coaching in the All-Star Game and helming a would-be championship contender.

It didn't work: Rivers coached that team to a 17–19 finish and an early playoff exit. The Bucks may have made a mistake in hiring an aging coach who was previously spending his time playing golf and mailing in appearances on Bill Simmons's podcast, but they stuck with their guy. The Bucks won 48 games and avoided the play-in last season, but Damian Lillard came down with deep vein thrombosis in late March, sat out the remainder of the regular season, played like shit for two games of a first-round playoff series, and then suffered a devastating Achilles injury that wiped out his 2025–26 season. In a move that will be rued for a generation by suffering Bucks fans, the team decided to use the NBA's stretch provision to waive Lillard, adding more than $22 million in dead salary to their annual payroll until the summer of 2030. Rivers and Horst flew to Greece ahead of this season in order to convince a skeptical Antetokounmpo that this was good business, that the team could compete by using savings from the maneuver to sign Myles Turner. That also has not worked.