What Adrian Griffin needs to get the Bucks back on the championship track

The Milwaukee Bucks have decided to pick their next head coach.

According to league sources, the Bucks will hire Toronto Raptors assistant coach Adrian Griffin as the franchise’s 17th head coach. After a three-week process in which General Manager John Hurst considered over a dozen candidates, the Bucks came to the decision that Griffin was the right coach to lead them to success, and the goal in that regard is clear.

“We’ll come back next year, try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better,” Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo said following the Bucks’ first-round loss to No. 8 seed Miami. heat. “I don’t have 10 days to play bad basketball. Hopefully we can win the championship.”

Trying to win a championship in the first season as the team’s head coach is a tough job for anyone, but that’s exactly what will cost Griffin trying to spot next season with the Bucks. Which is a fair goal given the team’s recent successes and the talent on the roster.

For Griffin, everything about this journey and the team’s path forward begins with Antetokounmpo.

When Mike Bodenholzer took over as head coach five years ago, Antetokounmpo’s potential seemed endless, but the Greek Bucks forward wasn’t named to the All-NBA First Team. Five years later, Antetokounmpo has clearly realized a lot of his potential. Antetokounmpo has been unanimously voted to the All-NBA First Team in each of the past five seasons. He earned four more All-Defensive Team nods and was named the 2021 NBA Defensive Player of the Year. He is a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, NBA Finals MVP, and NBA Champion.

But since Antetokounmpo is quick to remind people, he can always get better. Griffin’s first task moving forward will be to help Antetokounmpo become a better player.

As stated here in the athlete On Saturday, Antetokounmpo endorsed Griffin for the job, and that support should come in handy as Griffin and Antetokounmpo work together to help the Bucks track down the franchise’s third NBA championship. But finding new ways to help Antetokounmpo become better won’t be easy as he enters his eleventh season in the NBA in 2023.

When Antetokounmpo entered his sixth season in the NBA as a 24-year-old, the road ahead was easier and cleaner for Budenholzer. Five years later, Antetokounmpo has become the most dominant force in the NBA. Antetokounmpo wasn’t looking to go from good to great anymore; Griffin was tasked with helping one of the league’s best players go from great to great.

Rather than get a chance to overhaul a reactionary attacking approach that was desperate for more 3-point shooting and better spacing like Budenholzer, Griffin will need to find a way to build a modern offense that enhances Antetokounmpo’s control of the edge and ability with the ball in his hands after Budenholzer has already created something of a like that. Griffin will be tasked with building an offense in his own vision that accomplishes many of those same things, but also creates easier scoring opportunities for Antetokounmpo, so the Bucks’ seven-footer doesn’t always need to meander through defenders to get to the rim.

And this isn’t just Griffin’s fault. Antetokounmpo must be a big part of this process.

Together, they need to figure out what Antetokounmpo needs to do to continue growing offensively moving forward because Antetokounmpo’s shooting numbers stagnated under Budenholzer for the first time last season.

Antetokounmpo’s accuracy as a hurler did not increase under Budenholzer in a completely linear fashion, but the general trend lines in the first four seasons showed the player becoming more comfortable in his coach’s offensive system. And the eye-test match as if Antetokounmpo was more comfortable finishing shots — jump hooks, buoys, baseline turnovers, mid-range jumps — that didn’t require him to bully defenders all the way to the rim than before last season.

But then, as his utilization rate reached a career high, those numbers all fell back to what he did in his first season under Budenholzer. And it wasn’t easy for Antetokounmpo, which was similar to what happened in the qualifiers under Budenholzer as well. Too often over the past five seasons, the Bucks at halfcourt have struggled to make a good appearance in the postseason when it mattered most.

For example, after a 101-89 lead with 6:01 left in the fourth quarter of Game 4, the Bucks went scoreless for the next three minutes as they failed to create and finish the good look on offense and the Heat made a 13-0 run.

Two days later, in the Bucks’ Game 5 loss to the Heat, the Bucks had 102 points heading into the fourth quarter; After 12 minutes, they only scored 16 points and the Heat used the fourth quarter 32-16 to force overtime, eliminating the Bucks from the postseason.

Those moments in the playoffs are the hardest times to generate offense, but those are the moments when Griffin and the coaching staff he assembles will ultimately need to make it easy for Antetokounmpo and his teammates.

Since Griffin is a first-time head coach, there’s no previous game movie to study for hints as to what he might be trying to pull off. It’s possible that he’ll try to incorporate parts of what the Raptors have done over the past five seasons, but the Raptors’ halffield offense hasn’t been particularly strong in the past three seasons, so this may not be a good idea. Whatever Griffin puts together will be his first attempt at an NBA offense.

While Griffin will certainly need to create an offensive environment in which Antetokounmpo can not only continue to thrive, but also improve going forward, it won’t be his only job. The Bucks have also been an outstanding defensive team over the past five seasons under Budenholzer with three All-Defensive Team honors in Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday and Brook Lopez.

In his nine-year playing career, Griffin was a solid defensive winger. In eight of his first 10 years as an assistant coach, Griffin was part of the coaching staff run by such defensive-minded coaches as Scott Skiles and Tom Thibodeau. For the past five seasons, Griffin has been a part of Nick Nurse’s staff, and these Raptors teams have been running one of the NBA’s most aggressive, pressure-based defenses that focused on forcing turnovers, something that went very against Budenholzer’s defensive game plan that tried to break offensive players. In designated areas away from the edge, avoiding contamination at all costs.

Just watch how both teams began to defend a victory against Cavaliers’ Donovan Mitchell this past season.

On the aforementioned possession of the Bucks-Cavaliers game in November, Bucks guard George Hill fought to the top of the screen to prevent Mitchell from trying a 3-pointer and push him to mid-range. Lopez, covering a deep drop, waited for Mitchell at the left elbow before starting to fall as Mitchell attacked, Mitchell eventually hitting a retractable cover Hill was contesting from behind.

Now, watch the Raptors last season.

Just like Hill, Fred VanVleet fought back to the top of the screen to chase Mitchell from behind. But, rather than waiting in deep touchdown coverage like Lopez, OG Anunoby picked Mitchell at screen level and immediately began pressing the ballplayer, eventually leading to the steal when VanVleet caught the play.

Now, the Bucks and Raptors had very different rosters. The Raptors haven’t had a center on the floor for most of the past two seasons, so it’s been easier for them to build a defense against pressing, switching, rushing, and pressing than it has been for the Bucks, who have a much bigger and bigger squad.

But these are the decisions Griffin will have to make as he pitches his vision for the team, and he will need to make those decisions in coordination with Horst. Over the past five years and again at the beginning of the interview process, Horst has talked about how important it is for him to have a strong partnership with the Bucks head coach.

The work of creating that bond between Griffin and Horst starts right away as the Bucks have some major decisions to make this off-season. It’s not yet clear if Lopez and Khris Middleton will return next season, but if Horst keeps the vast majority of the Bucks roster from last season intact, Griffin will need to figure out how to come up with schemes that can help the bucks. He remains a standout at both ends of the earth and also finds postseason success in his first season as an NBA head coach.

For Griffin, the task would be difficult, but far from impossible.

Five starting coaches—Paul Westhead, Pat Riley, Steve Kerr, Tyrone Law, and Nurse—have won NBA titles since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976, and all three have done so in the past nine seasons. This season, rookie coaches Darvin Hamm and Joe Mazzola took their teams – the Lakers and Celtics – to the Conference Finals, and former Celtics coach Emi Udoka took Boston to the NBA Finals last season.

The Bucks have a real opportunity to follow in those teams footsteps and find success in Griffin’s first season. Over the past five seasons, no team has won more regular season games than the Bucks. They won their second NBA championship for the franchise in 2021. They have one of the best players in the world in their mid-season, but they haven’t lived up to expectations in each of the past two seasons.

With Middleton injured in 2021 and Antetokounmpo injured in 2022, they may have legitimate reasons for being eliminated very early in the playoffs, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened and that the Bucks haven’t lived up to expectations in four of the last five seasons. The Eastern Conference will still feature quality teams next season, but the Bucks should once again be among the favorites to represent the East in the 2024 NBA Finals when the regular season ends in four and a half months.

Nobody knows what Griffin will do as a first-time coach. His offensive and defensive schemes will be a mystery until the Bucks first hit the ground running next fall, but that doesn’t mean the outlook will be any different. With Antetokounmpo leading a talented roster, the Bucks’ title window is still open, and Griffin, in his senior season, will need to figure out how to make sure the Bucks capitalize on it.

(Photo by Adrian Griffin: Dan Hamilton/USA Today)