MILWAUKEE — Last season on Jan. 27, Doc Rivers was officially introduced as head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.
At the time of his news conference at Fiserv Forum that Saturday morning, the Bucks were 31-14 and getting ready to play the New Orleans Pelicans on the second night of a back-to-back. The Bucks ended the regular season with a 49-33 record, with Rivers notching a 17-19 mark after he took over. Eventually, the sixth-seeded Indiana Pacers scored a first-round upset over the third-seeded Bucks, as Giannis Antetokounmpo missed the entire series and Damian Lillard played in just two of six playoff games.
After winning the franchise’s second NBA championship in 2021, the first-round exit was the Bucks’ third consecutive early playoff elimination, as well as the third straight season in which one of their three main players missed a majority of their final playoff series. In 2022, Khris Middleton missed the Bucks’ entire second-round series against the Boston Celtics. In 2023, Antetokounmpo played in only nine quarters of the team’s first-round exit against the No. 8 seed Miami Heat.
Now, with his first full season in Milwaukee about to get underway, Rivers had a simple answer for the biggest challenge facing him.
“Health is not my challenge, but it’s our challenge as a team,” Rivers said. “We want to get to the playoffs healthy.”
For the Bucks, that would be a huge first step in trying to win an NBA title. Being healthy at the end of the regular season as the team heads into the playoffs will be essential, especially with a veteran roster, but Rivers admitted it isn’t the only thing he will be focused on.
“We want to be dominant all season and play well all season,” Rivers said. “So, to me, it’s more about the connection of our team. The better continuity we can have through the year, through training camp, (the better). That’s one of the reasons we’re going away for camp because that’s a major focus for us. I believe with what we have returning and what we’re bringing in, we have enough, but it only works if we do it as a group and together with one mind.”
Following Monday’s media day session, the Bucks made their way to the University of California-Irvine for the first five days of training camp. On Monday, when asked about the decision to go to California, Rivers claimed that taking camp on the road was an idea that hit him just over a week into taking over as head coach last season.
“I decided that literally 10 days here, I’m not kidding,” Rivers said. “I actually wrote that down 10 days after taking the job. We need to get this team away. I use the example several times, but think about Dame. I always use last year. Dame gets traded. Comes in the day before camp, the next day they practice, and what does he do after practice? Goes back to the hotel. Giannis goes home. Khris Middleton goes home. All the players go home. No connection. And that happens and then the season starts.
“I think it’s important that they’ll be riding in the car together to and from practice, going to dinners, spending time. I wish it was longer, honestly… But from a team standpoint, the longer they’re together, (the better). It’s nice that our first game is on the road, so it kind of extends it, you know? No families. No friends around. Just us. I think that’s good for our team.”
Continuing to build the connection between Antetokounmpo and Lillard will be a major part of that project for Rivers. While GM Jon Horst told The Athletic he would again make the trade that brought Lillard to Milwaukee a few days before training camp, there was no denial from the organization about just how difficult it was for the Bucks to attempt to merge the offensive skill sets of two superstars on the fly.
“I think now we’re in a very, very good place,” Antetokounmpo said. “Before, we never had a player like him. It’s just something that slowly, slowly with time you understand. It’s definitely hard when I’m 29 and he’s 34 at this moment of our careers to kind of change the habits you’ve created, but if you want to win, you have to do so. I think we both — me, him and the rest of our team — are willing to do whatever it takes to win.”
Following the Bucks’ first-round exit last season, Antetokounmpo told reporters that, after he recovered from the left soleus (calf) strain that kept him out of playoff action, he would make his way to Portland to work out with Lillard and get to know him better. Antetokounmpo revealed Monday that did not happen, as his summer was filled with rehab for the injury, training for the Olympics, representing Greece in the Olympics and getting married to his longtime partner, Mariah Riddlesprigger, in Greece.
While Antetokounmpo and Lillard not meeting may draw headlines, Lillard downplayed the importance. Instead, he explained that it was far more important for the Bucks’ superstar duo to be on the same page from a communication standpoint and revealed that he believes they had a breakthrough during last season’s playoff run, even with both of them sidelined.
“I think subconsciously, we are who we are because of how stubborn we are and how much we believe in what we believe,” Lillard said Monday. “And I’ve never played with a player of his level. He’s never played with a point guard like me. So I think it just took time for it to get to this point where I’m going to say what I need to say to you and it doesn’t have to be negative or like I’m coming at you, but I can say it, know that you’re going to take it as what I think the best thing is and vice versa.
“And I think we’ve had plenty of conversations about stuff like that, but I think once it got later in the season, we started to have more and more. And then, at one point in the playoffs, I think it was maybe Game 4 in Indiana, we both missed that game. Everybody went out to warm up, and me and him were the only two people in the locker room. And I just told him, ‘I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but me and you gotta get connected. We gotta get something done.’ And he agreed. And once he agreed, the conversation went a whole different way after that. It became a much more open conversation. From there, it just went into the summer and communication. And I think that’s more important than us getting on the court, working out together and all that stuff.
“You can work out until you’re blue in the face, and (as) soon as I say something in a game or he says something in a game and it don’t register or it’s not being received, then it’s not gonna work how you want it to work. But I think that communication was open, and I think that was the most important thing.”
On top of knowing each other better and having a more open line of communication, Lillard echoed many of the same sentiments he shared following the final game of his first season with the Bucks regarding what a real offseason could do for him in 2024-25. Before last season, Lillard did not work out and prepare for the season as he normally would as he waited for the Portland Trail Blazers to figure out if they were going to trade him.
That was not the case this offseason.
“My teammates and my coaches, they’re going to get the real version of me this year,” Lillard said. “And that’s without putting expectations on myself, I just know what type of year I had and I know the type of summer I had (last year) and preparation I had, and they’re going to get the real version of me. That’s really all I can say.”
With all of the talking done, the Bucks finished their media day responsibilities and headed west. As revealed by the team Monday, Middleton will start training camp slightly limited after offseason ankle surgeries, which means Rivers’ task of getting the team to the postseason healthy started before camp even opened. The rest of the work — the work needed to create and foster the connection needed to be a truly great team — started as soon as the players stepped on the team plane Monday afternoon.
And it will continue until the moment the 2024-25 season ends.
“The whole week long, it’s going to be just us together, whether it’s at the gym or in the hotel or at whatever restaurant or whatever activity we go to, we’re always going to be together,” Bucks center Brook Lopez said. “Just being together, hanging out … as long as we’re there together, fostering that community, that culture, I think spending as much time as possible together, yeah, is absolutely a benefit for us. So being on the road is going to be big for us.”
Let the journey begin.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: Benny Sieu / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
