From broken schemes to shaken confidence: Why the Milwaukee Bucks fired coach Adrian Griffin

The wins continued to pile up for the Milwaukee Bucks over the last two and a half months – 30 of them – beginning opening night against Philadelphia on Oct. 26 through Detroit on Jan. 22. Only two other teams in the NBA have that many.

Yet throughout the first months of Adrian Griffin’s successful, albeit brief, head coaching tenure there was a prevailing unease over the locker room, and the games.

He acknowledged it, once, calling it a “dark cloud” after a tough home win over Chicago on Nov. 13, just 10 games into the season when the Bucks were 6-4. By that point, the team’s veterans had already met with Griffin to amend his defensive schemes after early blowout losses to Atlanta and Toronto.

While there were games, or moments, to point to as improvement since that time, the overall tenor of the season was not a strong baritone but rather a trembling treble that became impossible to ignore. Bucks ownership and the front office heard and observed it all, and ultimately decided a new conductor was needed to get the team to its ultimate goal of a championship.

One of those voices belonged to Giannis Antetokounmpo, who was part of the offseason interview process that culminated with Griffin’s hiring. He has been visibly – and vocally – frustrated at various points from the very beginning of the season through this past weekend. After losing to Atlanta by 17 points on Oct. 29, he was animated in discussing plays with teammates and a coach.

After a loss to Indiana on Dec. 7 Antetokounmpo and others on the team spoke of disorganization on offense – but he maintained it was on the players to sort it out. But following a loss in Houston on Jan. 6, he said there was no pride defensively on the court and added the team needed direction and clarity on what to do from the coaching staff.

"We have to be better,” Antetokounmpo said in Houston. “We have to play better. We have to defend better. We have to trust one another better. We have to be coached better. Every single thing, everybody has to be better. Everybody.”

The team followed that up by being booed off the Fiserv Forum court at halftime in a blowout loss to Utah two days later. They have won five of six since, but the loss was by 40 in Cleveland on Jan. 17 and on the sideline of the Bucks’ victory in Detroit on Monday, Antetokounmpo was seen drawing plays.

Other players expressed their frustration, too, from Khris Middleton indicating they're answering the same questions about the same defensive problems after games on Nov. 11, Jan. 6 and Jan. 22, to Damian Lillard often talking through trying to find his place, and rhythm, in the offense.

The through line for the Bucks that kept them connected was winning, but enough of the discourse had been seen and heard by the upper levels of the organization and it was concerning – particularly when it came to defense.

And while small sample sizes indicated improvement on that side, especially after Middleton’s minutes restriction was lifted on Dec. 7, the team never found an identity defensively. Whether it was center Brook Lopez, a premier shot-blocker and rim-protector being asked to chase around smaller players on the perimeter, or the team's bigger players being taken away from the rim by their assignments – often leading to offensive rebounds for opponents, there were mounting questions about the effectiveness of what they were doing.

And while players consistently maintained their belief that they needed to be able to defend in multiple ways in a long playoff run, there was nothing they felt they could hang their hat on -- aside from a historic-level offense and frequent late-game heroics from Antetokounmpo, Middleton and Lillard.

Growing pains were expected from a first-year coach – like being unaware of Middleton’s minutes total at the start of the season or instructing his team not to foul late in a game against Chicago in late November – and early on many veterans insisted they had bought into the process and Griffin.

Yet, multiple team sources told the Journal Sentinel throughout the first half of the season that the players never got to the point of full belief Griffin could lead them to a championship. In the end, the top levels of the organization believed this to be the case, also.

Griffin’s technical savvy as an assistant coach, particularly on the defensive end, was seen as a strength when he was hired – but his ability to reach players and form important relationships was perhaps his greatest attribute. Yet while players openly appreciated his willing ear and decisions to adjust around their preferences, there was a feeling he never quite got full control of the locker room.

It was partly because that even in games that, in the moment, felt positive – like late-game communication in a win over the Heat on Nov. 28 – the players were actually calling plays for themselves. Or making defensive calls to change momentum on their own.

And despite Griffin’s consistent belief that clarity in his messaging was paramount in getting better defensive results, “miscommunication” was a word used early and often by players when talking about defense after nearly every game. There were clear breakdowns from veterans on in-bounds plays, confusion over transition pickups, and times where two players may be playing one way, and the other three were in a different coverage.

The Bucks, one of the most talented teams in the league, invariably found more ways to win than not over the first 43 games of the season – only Boston had a better record at the time of the change on Jan. 23. Yet few were easy. And while Griffin tried to accentuate the positive of the result – often maintaining winning in the NBA was hard – the stress of that was too palpable. The highs were too high, the struggles too visible.

There was discernible angst, for instance, in the two days following the blowout in Cleveland and before facing a Detroit team that is vying for the worst record in NBA history. And then the team had to fight to the end of those two games to beat the Pistons.

Before that could continue – particularly with a brutal stretch of games coming up against the Cavaliers (Jan. 24 and 26) and Western Conference playoff teams in New Orleans (Jan. 27), Denver (Jan. 29 and Feb. 12), Dallas (Feb. 3), Phoenix (Feb. 6), Minnesota (Feb. 8) and rival Miami (Feb. 13), Bucks leadership decided it had seen enough.

The Bucks will be guided in the short term by longtime NBA assistant Joe Prunty, who directed the team to the playoffs and a seven-game loss to Boston in 2018 after Jason Kidd was fired with 37 games remaining. Prunty also coached two games as an interim head coach in Atlanta in 2023.

The goal now, for ownership and general manager Jon Horst, is to find a veteran coach with a stronger hand.

Regardless of who the Bucks look to hire to finish out this season and beyond, the key element going forward will clearly not just be continuing to win games at a high rate from Day 1, but quickly create a chain of command and a cohesive belief that the next direction is the one that leads them to the NBA Finals.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Why the Milwaukee Bucks fired head coach Adrian Griffin