If the Bucks want Giannis Antetokounmpo to stay, Doc Rivers has to go

Why the 'no excuses' message from Giannis puts Doc Rivers on the clock in Milwaukee

Brad Botkin

Apr 7, 2026

6:02 pm ET

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7 min read

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On Tuesday morning, ESPN published an insider's look at a situation that, generally speaking, everyone on the outside could already see just fine: The Milwaukee Bucks are a mess.

The roster stinks. Giannis Antetokounmpo's mixed messaging has reduced whatever he says next to a grain of salt. The front office waited too long to pull the plug on the Antetokounmpo era, and in trying to keep it on life support, is now stuck with a bill that is well north of $200 million for Myles Turner and Damian Lillard, who doesn't even play for them anymore.

And then there's coach Doc Rivers.

Looking back, the first desperate domino to fall in Milwaukee was the Jan. 2024 firing of Adrian Griffin and the subsequent hiring of Rivers. At the time, you thought there was still a real chance for the Bucks to compete, not because of the Rivers hire, but because they had Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Khris Middleton as the core of a team that was 30-13 under Griffin.

Bucks under investigation as Giannis Antetokounmpo speaks out, but the messaging doesn't add up

Brad Botkin

Since that time, the Bucks have gone 95-100 under Rivers, who has, per his comically consistent tradition, called upon every excuse in the book to absolve himself of any blame. And don't think for a second that it hasn't caught the eye of the man at the center of this storm.

The following excerpt is from a Q&A Antetokounmpo did with Lori Nickel of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which was published on Monday, a day before ESPN's drama dump, and can only be described as a thinly veiled shot at Rivers.

> Do you see a path for you to come back and stay here?

Antetokounmpo: "100%. Yeah, yeah."

What would you need to see?

Antetokounmpo: "Everything about my decision is based on winning; culture. Like you saw I talked with [Boston] coach Joe Mazzulla. I said, 'you had so many opportunities to make excuses, but you didn't.' [The Celtics started the season slow.] And he said, 'Oh, they're good players.'

"I said, no. It's about the mentality that you instilled in your place. [Greek national team coach] Vassilis Spanoulis -- the same thing. That's why I love Spanoulis. It's about the mentality that he's instilled in the [Greek] national team, that we are here to give everything that we have. We are here to bond together. We are here to figure out ways to win. No excuses. Move as a group and you move as a unit. So, I love that."

In the interest of fairness, let's be clear: The Celtics, top to bottom, have way better players than the Bucks, so Mazzulla isn't wrong in citing them as the main reason for Boston's success this season. But Antetokounmpo also isn't wrong to note the galvanizing power of an accountable leader that doesn't make excuses.

If the situations were reversed, you can bet that Rivers would've been all too happy to take the crutches from Jayson Tatum and lean on them himself.

If Giannis wants 'no excuses,' Doc Rivers does not align

This is a guy whose teams have coughed up more 3-1 playoff leads than any coach in history, and yet he thinks he doesn't get enough credit for the three wins.

In Philadelphia, he played the Ben Simmons card so many times you would've thought he was dealing off the bottom of the deck. After Simmons got traded, Rivers needed a new scapegoat -- and sure enough, he wound up saying James Harden became selfish after he didn't make the All-Star team in 2023, basically citing that as the reason the 76ers fell short of a championship, or at least contending for one.

The icing on the cake was when Rivers lost seven of his first 10 games with the Bucks, only to let everyone in the basketball world know how difficult it is to take over a team midseason. Never mind that any unemployed coach would jump at the chance to inherit a team led by Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Middleton. That's an honest dream job, and it didn't take him three weeks before he was making it out to be a nightmare.

You might remember JJ Redick, who played for Rivers with the Los Angeles Clippers, going scorched earth on his former coach during his brief broadcasting days.

> JJ Redick calls out his former head coach Doc Rivers, who he will be replacing on ESPN/ABC's NBA Finals coverage.

"I've seen the trend for years. The trend is always making excuses. Doc, we get it. Taking over a team in the middle of a season is hard... it's always an excuse.… pic.twitter.com/NeTGnP1Suw

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 20, 2024

None of this is to suggest that some of, if not many of, Rivers' excuses aren't rooted in at least some truth. It's true that Antetokounmpo and Lillard were both hurt in the 2024 playoffs, and Lillard again in 2025 when he ruptured his Achilles. Perhaps some of the players really were already men