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The Milwaukee Bucks were 30-13 and sat in second place in the NBA’s Eastern Conference when they fired head coach Adrian Griffith on January 23.
Days later, they announced the hire of new head coach Doc Rivers. Milwaukee is now 35-21 and in third place in the conference, and just 3-7 under Rivers’ guidance.
Rivers has made several excuses for his poor start, blaming everything from his players to the league’s travel schedule. Now former player JJ Redick has finally heard enough.
“I’ve seen the trend for years. The trend is always making excuses. Doc, we get it,” Redick said on ESPN First Take. “Taking over a team in the middle of a season is hard. It’s hard. We get it. Just like getting traded in the middle of the season is hard for a player. We get it.
“But it’s always an excuse. It’s always throwing your team under the bus. They lose to Memphis, oh it’s his players fault. Memphis was playing G-League guys and two-way guys. Then you look at his quotes over the weekend and now he wants to take credit for the James Harden trade to the Clippers working out. He wants credit for that? There’s never accountability with that guy!”
Redick played for Rivers with the Los Angeles Clippers from 2013-17. But their connection goes even deeper. Redick is set to take over for Rivers in a play-by-play capacity for ESPN after Rivers abandoned the role in order to return to coaching.
After a 1-4 road trip to begin his tenure in Milwaukee, Rivers blamed just about everything except his coaching for the struggles.
“The Utah game, you kind of knew…you know the altitude, back-to-back. I mean, whoever scheduled a Dallas-Utah has never been on an airplane in their life or doesn’t know time zones,” he said. “That was just a tough one. We knew that, I guarantee you, when they looked at that before the year started, they were like, this was going to be a brutal game for us.”
There’s that classic Doc Rivers accountability…