For most folks, the timing of Adrian Griffin’s firing by the Milwaukee Bucks came as a total surprise. After all, the Bucks were coming off back-to-back wins when it was announced on a seemingly random Tuesday night that the front office had decided to part ways with the team’s head coach.
Team general manager Jon Horst has now broken his silence on this massive decision, and he has made it abundantly clear that Griffin’s exit actually comes at the perfect time for the Bucks.
Milwaukee Bucks GM Speaks Out on Adrian Griffin Firing
Horst addressed the press on Wednesday to discuss this sudden turn of events. The high-ranking team executive was asked straight up why the organization decided to give Griffin the axe. Horst got brutally honest in his response:
“It’s part of my job. It’s our job to constantly evaluate and to learn and listen and just continue to figure out how to improve this team,” Horst said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “For us, we felt like this was the right time, the right decision to make, and that we had an opportunity to improve the group. And there isn’t a specific instance. There isn’t a specific timing to it. It’s just going through it and evaluating and looking, the dynamic’s different. Giannis (Antetokounmpo) extended. Khris (Middleton) committed. Brook (Lopez) committed. We were able to acquire Dame (Lillard). These are hard windows to come by. These are special opportunities. We think we have a special group and believe in this team at a high level, and ownership, myself and Peter (Feigin, Bucks president), we’ve continued to be bold and to be aggressive in figuring out how to try to maximize these chances that we have. And that’s what we’re doing here.”
Without saying it directly, it appears that the message Horst is trying to send here is that the front office has lost faith in Griffin’s ability to lead the Bucks to a championship this season. He made no mention of Milwaukee’s chase for a title but in truth, he didn’t have to.
The Bucks made a lot of significant moves in the offseason with the sole objective of bringing home another chip to Milwaukee. Even though they might deny it, it truly is championship or bust for this team this season.
As it turns out, Griffin just wasn’t the man for the job anymore.
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