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Jamal Collier, ESPN
MILWAUKEE — The Bucks officially hired Doc Rivers as head coach on Friday night, moments before the end of their 112-100 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Rivers will be introduced at a news conference on Saturday morning. The Bucks play Saturday night at home against the New Orleans Pelicans, but sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that he will not coach his first game until Monday night on the road against the Denver Nuggets.
The Bucks will be the fifth franchise Rivers, 62, has taken over since he started as a head coach in 1999-2000. He met with the team at shootaround on Friday morning and delivered a short but powerful message, according to Bucks guard Pat Connaughton.
“He talks about just that identity that we should have as the Milwaukee Bucks,” Connaughton said after Friday’s game. “You talk about the talent that we have on the team, teams should be a little bit more afraid to play us.
“Right now, with the way our defense has been playing, the way we’ve been up and down in games — I know we have a great record — I don’t think teams have really been worried about coming in and playing us whether it’s at home or on the road.”
Bringing in Rivers caps a whirlwind week for Milwaukee, which fired first-year head coach Adrian Griffin on Tuesday, 43 games into the season. Rivers will also fortify the Bucks’ bench with a pair of veteran assistant coaches, adding Rex Kalamian and Dave Joerger to the bench, sources told Wojnarowski.
Rivers returns to the sideline after being dismissed from his most recent coaching job with the Philadelphia 76ers. In three seasons, he failed to lead the team out of the Eastern Conference semifinals, including a Game 7 loss to the Boston Celtics last season.
Rivers does have a previous connection with the city of Milwaukee. He was an All-American guard for Marquette in the early 1980s.
Rivers has racked up 1,097 coaching wins over his career, ninth-most in NBA history and just two shy of passing Larry Brown for sole possession of eighth all-time. His streak of 16 consecutive winning seasons is topped only by Gregg Popovich, Phil Jackson and Pat Riley, according to research by ESPN Stats & Information.
Although Rivers won a championship with the Celtics in 2008 and reached the NBA Finals again in 2010, his playoff record has been blemished in recent years. Rivers has dropped nine straight games with a chance to reach the conference finals, and he owns a much lower winning percentage in the postseason (.516) compared with the regular season (.590).
“I look at our team and I look at the situation that he’s coming into, we get to those [playoff] situations, I think we’ve got a really good chance to close,” Connaughton said. “His ability to come in and command respect immediately; his ability to lead because he’s led for so long; he’s led all different types of personalties; all different types of guys in the NBA he’s led through different eras of the NBA. I think that will be stuff that will super helpful to everybody on the team.”
Bucks forward Bobby Portis agreed with the assessment and said he was excited to have a coach coming in with a chip on his shoulder.
“It’s going to be fun just to get coached by someone who has something to prove as well,” Portis said. “Not saying we’ve failed the last couple years, but we didn’t achieve what was sought to be the goal. Having a coach that’s low key in the same boat as us is gravy. It’s refreshing as well to have everybody on he same page and have guys that ultimately have a chip on their shoulder with something to prove.”