The expectations are pretty huge for Doc Rivers now that he’s the new head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks. To be fair, the 62-year-old is well aware of what he signed up for when he agreed to take on the high-profile job.
Simply put, anything less than a championship this season would be considered a disappointment for this team.
Doc Rivers Gets Real on Milwaukee Bucks Transition
Speaking after losing in his Bucks coaching debut against the Denver Nuggets, Rivers conceded that he has a long road ahead of him. The tenured shot-caller also knows that there’s going to be a considerable adjustment period for him as he gets himself acclimatized to his new job:
“I’m happy with where we’re going,” Rivers said, via Eric Nehm of The Athletic. “I just know for a while it’s going to be tough, especially offensive calls. I had to turn to Joe (Prunty) and DJ (Bakker) a lot because me and (Dave Joerger), we’d be like, ‘What’s that play where Bobby … ?’ It’s going to take a minute.”
As a bit of a side note, Rivers stated previously that he expects to make some changes in the coaching staff he inherited from Adrian Griffin. However, the fact that he’s named assistants Joe Prunty and DJ Bakker as the two main guys he’s been asking the most help from early on probably means that both can consider their jobs safe.
What we saw in the Nuggets game was how Rivers was able to seamlessly incorporate his own plays into his new team. However, Coach Doc is adamant that it’s more important that he’s able to turn to the Bucks’ old plays moving forward:
“I mean, I’ve watched our offense 50 times over the last two days, yet it’s just going to take time to have the right rhythm to make the right calls. We scored a lot out of ATOs (after timeout plays). That was my stuff, but I’d rather score off of what we run because they know the second and third options of those,” Rivers stated.
This makes a lot of sense to me.
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