The Milwaukee Bucks have been good this season: 15-7 record, top three offense in the league, elite in the clutch thanks to Damian Lillard, and they are the No. 2 seed in the conference.
However, they haven’t looked like a contender and that is the only goal for the Bucks. They have a bottom 10 defense and still don’t look totally in sync on offense. Tension about that bubbled over in the locker room after the Bucks lost to the Indiana Pacers Thursday in the In-Season Tournament semifinals, reports Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report and TNT. Veteran backup big man Bobby Portis stepped up and called out rookie coach Adrian Griffin, according to the report.
Griffin entered the locker room and began harping on the importance of winning the rebounding battle, sources say. The Pacers outrebounded the Bucks 51-46.
Portis, who scored four points on just five shots against Indiana in a near-season-low 18 minutes, quickly interjected and stressed how essential it is for Griffin to structure the offense down the stretch of games, sources said.
As one of the leaders of the team, Portis continued on voicing his concerns. Griffin welcomed the criticism and acknowledged he could do a better job being more aggressive with his play-calling, sources say. The nine-year veteran explained that it’s a two-way street: direction is needed and then it’s up to the players to execute, sources say.
Milwaukee’s front office made the move Giannis Antetokounmpo wanted, bringing in a new coach in Griffin, but putting a rookie coach in charge — plus adding a major new piece in Lillard — was always going to lead to a steep learning curve for a win-now team. That is a recipe for tension.
There are a lot of eyes on Griffin. He tried to change the Bucks’ successful drop-back, protect-the-paint defense to something more aggressive to start the season, and it didn’t take long for the players to come to him and say, “We need to go back to what this roster was built for.” They’ve done that and the defense has been better for stretches, but not elite. (Trading out Jrue Holiday for Damian Lillard at the point, with Malik Beasley at the two, was going to make this a worse defensive team no matter who coached.) Griffin brought former Blazers head coach Terry Stotts as an assistant to retool the offense and help Lillard feel at home, but Stotts was frustrated with the situation and quit during the preseason (that was not all on Griffin, but he never figured out how to make Stotts more comfortable and as a head coach he takes the blame for that).
Milwaukee is talented and very good, but that is not the bar for the Bucks. This is a title-or-bust team and the Bucks do not look like an elite contender yet. Contrast that with the 76ers, who underwent a coaching change (to a veteran coach in Nick Nurse that the Bucks were slow to consider) and had a major personnel shake-up with James Harden leaving, yet Philadelphia feels like a team on an upward trajectory. Players have bought into Nurse’s movement offense, Joel Embiid’s playmaking has improved and he is at an MVP level again, Tyrese Maxey is thriving, and they have the flexibility to add to that roster at the trade deadline.
The Bucks don’t feel like that right now, it’s more stagnant. There is still three-quarters of a season to figure things out. Jon Horst and Milwaukee’s front office have been creative, but there is a lot of work to do if Milwaukee is going to be a threat to the Celtics or any other contender on the biggest stages.
The IST loss to the Pacers just laid that bare. Portis did what a veteran leader should do and called out his team for it. The question now is where does that lead?
