With a 30-13 record to his name, you can’t really say that Adrian Griffin was doing a terrible job coaching the Milwaukee Bucks this season. Then again, once you set the record aside and really examine the way the Bucks have played throughout the campaign, it’s hard to deny that Griffin has had his fair share of shortcomings as a head coach.
It wasn’t that he was bad. It’s just that he simply wasn’t good enough.
Did the Milwaukee Bucks Make a Mistake With Adrian Griffin?
At this point, you can’t help but ask if hiring him was the right move in the first place. Prior to taking over the helm in Milwaukee, Griffin had zero experience as the head coach in the NBA — something that became more and more evident as the season progressed.
Moreover, Griffin was succeeding former Coach of the Year winner Mike Budenholzer in one of the most high-pressure jobs in the entire NBA.
General Manager Jon Horst was asked by the press on Wednesday if he felt the organization was at fault for hiring someone who wasn’t capable of getting the job done. The high-ranking Bucks executive decided to side-step the loaded question:
“Someone really wise once said looking back is ego, so I’m going to stay in the present and not look back. There’s no regrets,” Horst said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I believe in the hire that we made. I believe in the reasons we did it, the process we went through, and again, Adrian has contributed to this group. Part of why we are where we are today and who we are is because of him. This was an opportunity about going forward. Yeah, no regrets from me. No looking back. I believe in what we did why we did when we did it and believe in where we’re at today as well.”
To be fair, Horst did say multiple times that he holds no regret about hiring Griffin. However, he refused to throw the disgraced coach under the bus by directly saying that Griffin wasn’t competent enough to fulfill his role.
Horst was then asked if he felt Griffin’s lack of experience played a pivotal role in his inability to get the job done. Again, the team GM opted to respond with an indirect answer:
“It was a tough job and a great opportunity – both things were true – when we hired Griff,” Horst said. “The dynamics and the things that changed after that I think created even more of an urgency and even more so. These are special opportunities. The talent became even more special. The commitment to the team even more significant. And I think that increased the urgency. It’s not because I’m afraid to be wrong. I’ve been wrong many a times. I believe Griff still is a head coach. Guy’s 30-13. It made this such a tough decision. This is an assessment and an evaluation for myself, Peter and our ownership group in how do we give this team the best resources to maximize this window. It’s way more about that and way less about what Griff did or didn’t do.”
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