{"id":112320,"date":"2024-12-15T12:16:10","date_gmt":"2024-12-15T17:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=112320"},"modified":"2024-12-15T12:16:10","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T17:16:10","slug":"bucks-bobby-portis-responsible-coach-adrian-griffin-firing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/12\/15\/bucks-bobby-portis-responsible-coach-adrian-griffin-firing\/","title":{"rendered":"Bobby Portis Ultimately Responsible For Bucks Coach\u2019s Firing"},"content":{"rendered":"

It isn\u2019t often that a head coach is fired when his team has won 69.8 percent of their games that season. In fact, the last time a winning NBA head coach<\/a> was fired was in 2015-16, when the Cleveland Cavaliers let go of 2014 EuroLeague Coach of the Year David Blatt. When the Milwaukee Bucks decided to part ways with Adrian Griffin Sr., he didn\u2019t share Blatt\u2019s rumored problem of failing to hold star players accountable though.<\/p>\n

To the contrary, his issue might have been giving non-star players free reign to publicly hold him accountable. In a vacuum, an organization should want that type of transparency between a head coach and players. Yet, the timing of the Dec. 7 report about veteran Bobby Portis<\/a> calling out Griffin after a close loss<\/a> and the Bucks dismissing him on Jan. 23 doesn\u2019t seem to be coincidental.<\/p>\n

Bobby Portis Ultimately Responsible For Bucks Head Coach Adrian Griffin\u2019s Firing<\/h2>\n

Portis\u2019s message to Griffin and his teammates had merit. At the time of Griffin\u2019s departure, Milwaukee was still trying to find the right recipe on both ends. Nonetheless, when considering how the Bucks have looked in the 70 games since (playoffs included), they were clearly too hasty.<\/p>\n

Almost every week there\u2019s a new excuse for why they and Doc Rivers \u2014who they hired on Jan. 26 \u2014need more time. This despite Rivers being just 31-30 with Milwaukee in the regular season and 2-4 in the postseason. Perhaps Rivers\u2019s body of work should<\/em> allow him to be given more grace. Regardless, that doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s been better for them than Griffin.<\/p>\n

If a team\u2019s record reflects what they are, then the Bucks have been average-at-best under Rivers, whereas Griffin had them firmly in playoff \u00a0\u2014if not title \u2014contention.<\/p>\n

David Blatt-Adrian Griffin Parallels<\/h3>\n

In some ways, Griffin\u2019s experience as an NBA head coach did parallel Blatt\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Like Blatt, Griffin was hired to coach a team that then made a significant change to their roster. With the Bucks, it was their decision to trade defensive stalwart Jrue Holiday<\/a> for the scoring-minded Damian Lillard<\/a>. With the Cavs, it was Andrew Wiggins<\/a> being shipped to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for Kevin Love<\/a>. In addition, LeBron James<\/a> returned to Cleveland after his stint with the Miami Heat.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Blatt, James didn\u2019t seem to respect him much<\/a>. Indeed, James went out of his way to change the offense without Blatt\u2019s consultation and gloated about it. It\u2019s no surprise that Blatt didn\u2019t feel comfortable calling James out due to his behavior and their respective statures, but that\u2019s not the story.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s that the stars didn\u2019t really trust Blatt and their influence trickled down and emboldened other mutinous players. That appears to have been the case for Griffin as well.<\/p>\n

Milwaukee Mutiny?<\/h3>\n

Frankly, the individual who leaked the contents of the locker room meeting may have wanted<\/em> Griffin to be painted in a bad light.<\/p>\n

Portis\u2019s admitting to recently talking to his family about it<\/a>, comments that came with a smile, could be evidence that he was the source of the leak. Considering the relationship between Lillard and Chris Haynes, who broke the story, he\u2019s another candidate. The fact that one of Rivers\u2019s focuses was on making Lillard more comfortable lends credence to that.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Portis is ultimately responsible for Griffin\u2019s firing if said report or meeting was truly a factor in the decision. Vocal leaders are necessary but so is being tactful and respectful. Whatever Portis had to say to Griffin could\u2019ve been said in private. Instead, he chose to make a first-year head coach with a 30-13 record look incompetent in the locker room and thus the media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It isn\u2019t often that a head coach is fired when his team has won 69.8 percent of their games that season. In fact, the last time a winning NBA head coach was fired was in 2015-16, when the Cleveland Cavaliers let go of 2014 EuroLeague Coach of the Year David Blatt. When the Milwaukee Bucks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":112328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1608,9,62],"tags":[27605,1255,187,2733,190,38],"class_list":["post-112320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bucks","category-basketball","category-cavaliers","category-nba","tag-adrian-griffin","tag-bobby-portis","tag-damian-lillard","tag-david-blatt","tag-doc-rivers","tag-lebron-james"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112329,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112320\/revisions\/112329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}