🚨 Adrian Griffin OUT as Bucks coach 🚨 FULL REACTION | NBA Today

🚨 Adrian Griffin OUT as Bucks coach 🚨 FULL REACTION | NBA Today

We start our show with breaking news the Milwaukee Bucks have fired head coach ad Adrien Griffin according to our senior NBA Insider Adrien Wy who is here alongside myself Jana gum Richard Jefferson Griffin was hired in June and in his 43 games as head coach he went 30

And 13 in that time so why is this happening now W yeah I think this was an agonizing decision for this Milwaukee organization they were very fond of Adrien Griffin they gave him his first head coaching opportunity this off seon uh but they looked at where this team

Was how it was responding under Griffin although the second best record right now you mentioned 30 and 13 that they have such a tight Championship window with diis satena Copo certainly the Damen Liller trade you know which happened after uh they hired Griffin as head coach and they made a decision to

Make to to make the change they told Adrien Griffin of that just within the last hour I’m told that he’s out and this is a Milwaukee team uh that you have seen at every turn uh trying to maximize again this Championship window and they make a really difficult

Decision today to move on from Adrien Griffin and I’m told now you know Joe pry is expected to be the interim coach you’ve seen him as an interim coach uh previously in Milwaukee after Jason kid uh in Atlanta also but they’re going to start a search immediately for a new

Head coach they want an accomplished veteran head coach yeah who’s available and I’m told that doc river is among the Doc Rivers is among the very serious candidates that Milwaukee is going to look at here as they move forward wow so Joe pry takes over for the third time as

Interim head coach in his career Adrien Griffin once again out as the Milwaukee Bucks head coach and now a search commences I have so many questions Richard but let’s just start with your first blessed response to this uh it’s shocking you know we had the opportunity to to interview Adrien Griffin at the

Start of the season and just you know so many times coaches say when you take over as a first-time head coach you don’t realize all the decisions that you are having to make I was a part of a team in 2016 uh that let go of their

Coach and T and T took over but I I I think that situation was very different because you had an individual that had been there with that group for two years it wasn’t a new voice it wasn’t it wasn’t a new system so to bring in a Doc

Rivers situation to bring in anybody in there it does add a difficulty we saw it last year with Quinn Snyder coming in there in the middle of the season but Quinn also had time to assess right his Runway is very different to me I think it was shocking because what did we see

Last night at Giannis on to TMO triple double they’re coming off of a win they have the second best record right now in the NBA but the reality is we talk about this so much here on this program if you want to be a championship team you need

To have a championship defense at least in the top 10 last year the Milwaukee Bucks had a championship defense they were fourth in defense this year they’re 22nd and particularly in January they’ve been 27th I think that’s just no matter how much you love your coach there are certain standards especially when you

Have Giannis and you put all the chips in the middle of the table to get Dame Lillard and a lot of people have been criticizing how they’ve looked and I think that that recipe was not necessarily for success for them in this highly pressured year one with that

Amazing Duo the Bucs have won five their last six games but the last four just really have not been that convincing when you look at the ways in which they have won I I guess next my question is w what does this mean for jannis to tent

TMO well listen you are always on the clock with players like J tent Copo even when they sign an extension and so I think I don’t think this was a Giannis decision I think this was you know uh Chen mentioned the defense this defense was not going to be the same defense if

Mike buen holer was here if Tom Tibido was here they traded out Damen Lillard they traded out Drew holiday to bring in Damen Lillard you are not going to guard the ball you’re not going to guard the perimeter in the same way that you do that you did when you had Drew Drew

Holiday spearheading that defense but they have given up a lot of points uh they’ve been a team that despite the record and winning being on streak it hasn’t I think to Milwaukee felt right looked right and I think again this is this is an organization that you know took some risk hiring a

Young coach in the off season he was part of of a pretty broad search and I think Adrien Griffin’s going to be a good head coach in the NBA I think they feel that in Milwaukee also that he is going to be a good head coach this is a

Unique situation right where it is Win now uh give ourselves as the Bucks the best possible chance to uh compete with the elite of the league they didn’t think they had that anymore with Adrien Griffin and now they’re going to go out uh in the marketplace talk to some

Coaches again I think doc River Doc Rivers uh you know who was in Philadelphia the last three years the Clippers before that obviously won a championship y with the Boston Celtics uh he is a uh is somebody who has Milwaukee Roots played his college basketball it Marquette is popular in

That region obviously grew up in Chicago uh I think that’s going to be a a point of focus for the buck now uh is they start this search which may wrap up pretty quickly and as you just saw at home the Griffin had the best record by

A head coach to get to Smith midseason since David blat in 2015 16 well no I just would like to Echo the points that that WJ made Adrian Griffin is going to be a very good head coach in this league I’ve had him as a player i’ I’ve played

With him I’ve been coached by him I know that he knows what he is doing yeah was this the ideal situation even with the um the endorsement from different players this might not have been the best situation for a first year here at coachwood really it’s Championship or

Bus especially when you get um when you get an individual uh like game added to your roster so that’s where it became difficult I don’t think this is an indictment as much on a AJ Griffin’s ability to coach I think it was more of with this group with their timetable as

A very young new head coach that’s what makes it different well look this is a huge decision to take at this point in the season and W can correct me if I’m wrong he’s up there but I believe this hiring came down to Adrien Griffin Nick nurse who’s now in Philadelphia doing a

Great job and Kenny ainson who’s still in Golden State so the roads not taken for the bucks are pretty interesting but look they do have a great record but they’ve played the easiest schedule in the NBA by a wide margin their defense just has not been good enough and that’s

Not all in Adrien Griffin that’s a player thing and a Personnel change thing as well but you look at some of the stuff that’s happened so far in the season Terry stots left the job he was the brought there to be the lead assistant kind of the veteran Mentor he

Said something’s wrong here I I don’t like it first 10 games of the Season they’re playing a much more aggressive defense and the players go to Adrien Griffin and say hey we’ve done it one way under Mike wener can we go back to that way and Adrien Griffin listened to

Them that’s a good sign their transition defense has been a mess all season and we’ve been on this show talking about why are we not seeing more Dame Giannis picking roll and that’s only the stuff that’s on the surface and all those guys up on the desk there nailed it they just

Don’t have time to wait for all of those issues to settle and everything to settle down this team’s got to win right now and they’re winning but you know it when you see it they’ve been winning but not in the manner that suggests they can win three playoff series to get out of

The East when two of them are going to have to come against probably Philly and Boston so whoever gets this job there’s a great team in here somewhere and they’ve got to find it immediately but there’s been smoke simmering almost since they hired a Griffin that’s just

The the the bottom line so Adrien Griffin out but Damen Lillard still there Yannis sentac kmo still there where did the Bucs go from here how do they fix this defense well all I can think about is cuz I’ve been in a circumstance where our coach left you

Know midseason and it does destabilize the locker room a little bit but sometimes I think it can Galvanize also because sometimes you just need a different voice in the room and if they respond well to a different voice in the room I think they’re looking at the overall landscape and seeing how teams

Are improving and how it felt like you know at the time when this trade was made everyone was like oh wow it’s the Bucks world and now we’re seeing so many competitors to that I think the focus has to be honest I’ve seen Giannis over the past few months since the season

Started he’s had you know outputs of 64 points he’s had out outputs of 54 points he’s also like tried to modify to suit this team he had a game where he had 11 points and 16 assists not too long ago they’ve been searching for some kind of fluidity they’ve been searching for some

Type of continuity I think finding that that ability of a coach to say like all right Yannis this is exactly what we expect of you Dame this is exactly what we expect of you I’ve seen the players try to do that in real time that’s why I’m trying to tell you those different

Ranges of things that we’ve seen from Yannis so I think just stabilizing and also changing the voice hopefully will give them enough of a pointed effort to see if they can really capitalize on this year like I mentioned earlier when David black got fired in Cleveland he

Had been there for a year in change y tou was the associate head coach tou had been there for an entire year and a half so the terminology stayed the same the play stayed the same the way we played changed he definitely motivated got going if another coach comes in here

It’s the termin there is a learning curve that is going to be a lot harder if people want to try and compare it to the situation in two 2016 that is very different than what any head coach is going to come in with a championship or bus quality is there issue the learning

Curve isn’t there issue more so the effort right the effort there’s well now you got to have effort and learning I think that’s why the pressure was on the coach because the learning like we all know that their makings of Dame and Giannis and the surrounding cast they

Should be able to go out there and hoop but it was the effort that the lack of effort that we’re seeing a lot of times we talk about defense and like you know we saw some plays where yanis was uncharacteristic defensively you know and that sort of put a question mark on

What we’re experiencing you know you uh Richard mentioned the David blat situation uh a year and a half in the job when David blat was hired LeBron James had not come back to Cleland yet he was hired for a very different team it would it was a team built around

Kyrie Irving um they loved his offensive expertise in in building something offensively around Kyrie and the group they had it changes when LeBron James uh comes back in free agency now this is a little different in that listen jannis attenda Copo who is the centerpiece of

All of this was in place but it was a different team with Drew holiday vers Damen Lillard and certainly defensively um whether you looked at was Nick nurse and Zack mentioned it those were the other two finalists Nick nurse Kenny ainson one was a championship coach

Kenny ainson had been uh a head coach in Boston in in Brooklyn had some success and has been with uh Steve cert and Golden State for a few years you know three very different kinds of coaches but I think that trade happens uh and now they get this far into it and again

You look at the standings and you say they’re right there but it was I think feeling like were they maximizing this group I think as Zach said they’ve had the easiest schedule in the league it’s going to get a lot harder you know you saw them you know get run by the Pacers

Four times the speed and athleticism of of Dominic Guard play the problem they were having with that at the defensive end and now you know listen I think if they were to look back at the summer and how they conducted the search they might feel differently about hiring a firsttime head coach

And now they’re going to go out and if it’s Doc Rivers certainly you have a coach who’s had uh you know certainly won a championship in Boston but you know had led a very successful Eastern Conference Team over the last three seasons perk what’s your reaction to

This you know Malik I wanted to come on here and talk about what’s up with Giannis and why Giannis you know running through these coaches over the last couple months but I can’t the Milwaukee Bucks actually got this one right and they did something that a lot of

Franchises are afraid to do and that sto the bleeding they stopped the bleeding early look when you’re a team that have Championship aspirations and your goal is to re reach the championship especially after they traded for Damen Lillet right you could see in body language if a team is ready and the and

The head coach has the ears of his team and looking at their body language their defensive effort and watching them play their postgame comments the writing was on the wall and so you rather stop the bleeding now and I get it everybody was fooled and blind blinded by the fact

That they are 30 and 13 and they’re number two in the Eastern Conference but at the end of the day they just wasn’t they just wasn’t a championship team with Adrien Griffin at the head of the sea so perk W is also reporting that the Bucs are planning to move quickly to

Pursue a a small group of accomplished uh and available veteran head coaches with Doc Rivers being one of them you have experienced with Doc how do you think he would fit there dang we we didn’t get that much time to work I was hoping to call a game

With Doc but you know what if it’s any coach that they should go get and I’m not being buas here it should be Doc Rivers because Doc Rivers didn’t deserve to get fired from Philadelphia when it comes to putting stars in the right position to be successful Doc Rivers

Could do that when it comes to Gathering the troops to believe in what to buy in to what he’s saying Doc Rivers could do that and I really don’t see no other coach out there that could actually go in and fulfill this role right now other than Doc Rivers you can’t put an

Assistant in this role like Joe Missoula is a unique situation right Adrien Griffin should have been with a team that’s rebuilding not a championship team but if you had if I had to make a choice damn it I’m calling Doc Rivers right now got what I [Applause] [Applause] look

Adrian Wojnarowski joins NBA Today to break the news that Adrian Griffin and the Milwaukee Bucks have parted ways and then the panel react to the news.

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