Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers says the team isn’t feeling any extra pressure as it works to recover from the franchise’s worst start in 30 years.
The Bucks (1-6) will aim to end a six-game losing streak on Thursday when they face the Utah Jazz (1-6). They will still be without three-time All-Star forward Khris Middleton, who is recovering from surgery on both of his ankles during the offseason.
“The worry is outside the building, I guarantee you that,” Rivers said on Wednesday. “There’s none inside the building.”
Milwaukee’s tough start to the season has likely pleased rival teams that would be interested in trading for two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo if he became unhappy and asked for a trade.
Antetokounmpo, who missed the Bucks’ 116-114 loss at Cleveland on Monday because of a strained adductor muscle, said the team had started to make improvements over the weekend.
“That doesn’t mean we are going to a five-game winning streak or 10-game winning streak, but I know that we are playing better and we trust one another better,” Antetokounmpo said after a 114-113 home loss to Cleveland on Saturday. “The ball is moving. There’s a lot of good things that we can do. That’s all we can control.”
The Bucks won an NBA championship just a few years ago, in 2021, and the team has been focused on winning another title while Antetokounmpo is still in his prime.
Former coach Mike Budenholzer was let go after the Bucks finished with the best regular-season record in 2022-23 but were eliminated by Miami in the first round of the playoffs.
Budenholzer was replaced by Adrian Griffin, who was fired in the middle of last season even though the team had a 30-13 record under him. Since Rivers took over, the Bucks have gone 18-25, not counting their 4-2 loss to Indiana in the first round of the playoffs last season.
Doc Rivers insists there’s “zero pressing from us” and pointed to the decision to rest Giannis Antetokounmpo for Monday’s game as an example of the team’s approach to maintaining his health.
With the Bucks playing five games in just seven days, they wanted to make sure the 6-foot-11 forward stayed as healthy as possible. Antetokounmpo is listed as questionable for Thursday’s game.
“This is a positive group,” Rivers said. “We believe we’re a really good basketball team that has played poorly at times. The last two games you could say we played well and lost the games.”
Despite their rough start, the Bucks are still confident they can turn things around. “You’re going to have these funks,” forward Bobby Portis said. “It’s just our funk came at the start of the season.”
However, there’s concern because recent history shows how difficult it can be to recover from this kind of slow start. This is the longest the Bucks have gone without getting their second win of the season since 1993-94, when they won their first game and then lost 10 straight. That team ended the season with a 20-62 record.
According to Sportradar, 20 teams in NBA history have made the playoffs after winning no more than one of their first seven games. But only three teams have done it this century: Miami in 2003-04, Chicago in 2004-05, and New Orleans in 2021-22. Eight of those 20 teams played from 1956-68, when the majority of teams made the playoffs.
The Bucks are hoping for a boost when Khris Middleton returns, but no one knows when that will happen. Rivers was asked on Wednesday if this was now becoming more of a week-to-week situation rather than a day-to-day issue.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Rivers said. “That’s a good question that I can’t answer.”
The Bucks have also had other challenges. They’ve played six of their first eight games on the road, and three of their losses came against the defending champion Boston Celtics and the undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers. The two games against the Cavs were decided by a total of just three points.
Now, Milwaukee has four of its next five games at home, which gives them a chance to recover. “It can only go up from here,” Portis said. “It can’t get worse than what it is right now.”
