New Bucks coach Adrian Griffin will sign a multiyear deal and has begun coaching duties. Sources
MILWAUKEE — After a busy Memorial Day weekend packed full of news, the Bucks quietly went about negotiating a contract with former Toronto Raptors assistant coach Adrian Griffin, the man they tabbed to be the franchise’s 17th head coach. And Griffin will soon sign his Bucks deal, league sources say.
While the team has not yet made the hire official, league sources tell The Athletic that Griffin has been with the team throughout the week in various meetings and draft workouts in Milwaukee. The Athletic has also learned that Griffin will be paid roughly $4 million per year on a multiyear contract with the Bucks.
Griffin and the Bucks will now work toward securing veteran assistants for his coaching staff. Two potential candidates are former Charlotte Hornets coach James Borrego and ex-Portland Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts, according to the sources.
While we wait on the official announcement from the organization, let’s take a look at a few more questions that linger about the hire and Griffin’s future in Milwaukee.
Who is coming with Griffin to Milwaukee?
As discussed multiple times throughout the last few weeks, this is Griffin’s first head-coaching position.
After deciding to transition from an NBA player to an NBA coach in 2008, Griffin served as an assistant coach for 15 seasons for five different teams. In that time as an assistant, Griffin was surely able to connect with the coaches on all of those staffs as well as various coaches from around the league, but that doesn’t necessarily suggest who he might target to join him in Milwaukee on his coaching staff.
Building a coaching staff, however, doesn’t always end up being the sole responsibility of the head coach. Organizations can also be used for support in these situations. As the Bucks build out the staff, they will have to work with Griffin to figure out how to put together the best possible support group for their new head coach.
And there is a lot to consider.
For example, as an assistant, Griffin spent a considerable amount of time working for defensive-minded coaches like Scott Skiles, Tom Thibodeau and Nick Nurse and also spent much of his time on the Raptors’ defensive game plan, so maybe an offensive mind would help the staff. Or maybe the Bucks need to add a younger coach to the staff since Griffin is 48 years old. Because Griffin has never been an NBA head coach, maybe the Bucks could find it useful to grab a former head coach to help Griffin sort through building out an organizational strategy.
Speaking of which, per league sources, the Bucks have shown interest in adding Borrego to the staff. Borrego, 45, served as coach of the Charlotte Hornets for four seasons from 2018 to 2022, but he has also been connected to a number of teams searching for an assistant coach position this offseason.
Another thing to keep in mind is that assistant coaches don’t necessarily have the same contract as the head coach. While the Bucks parted ways with Mike Budenholzer, the team’s assistant coaches all have separate contracts of their own and need to figure out their next step as well.
Bucks general manager Jon Horst talked about the situation on May 5, when discussing the head coach opening with reporters.
“I have a ton of respect for all of this group,” Horst said. “I think we have one of the best supporting coaching groups in the NBA and I would hope if they’re still with us when we make the next hire, that they’ll get consideration from that hire. That’ll be part of that process.
“I also expect a number of these guys will have other opportunities across the league. And if they do, I have great relationships with everyone, we’ll have an open line of communication as we already do and I’ll support them in that way too.”
Horst further explained that while the team parted ways with its head coach, the organization still had work to do. Those assistant coaches would be the people executing that work, whether those were workouts for players who were still in town or draft workouts for prospective players. In the last few weeks, a few Bucks assistants have shared farewells to the city on their social media, but others still work for the team. Griffin and Horst will have to decide if any of the assistants from Budenholzer’s staff will stick around for another year in Milwaukee.
How does Griffin find the balance between the new and the old?
When Budenholzer came to Milwaukee in 2018, he was coming off five seasons in Atlanta in which the Hawks finished the regular season top-10 or better in forcing turnovers. After five seasons in Milwaukee, the Bucks never once finished outside of the bottom 10 in forcing turnovers defensively. Both defenses were overwhelmingly successful in both Atlanta and Milwaukee, but Budenholzer opted to focus on different things with each defense.
With Griffin, there is no outline for what he previously did as a head coach. There is no film to watch to understand his tendencies or tactics. He will be a blank slate in that regard, but the Bucks, as a team, will not and watching Griffin lay out his own offensive and defensive strategies will be a fascinating coaching exercise.
All coaches have certain core beliefs, certain things that they believe in unconditionally, but there are also certain realities with every roster. As covered earlier this week, there is a real possibility that the main contributors at the top of the Bucks’ roster are the exact same as last season. And if that is the case, there are certain strategies, like an emphasis on rim protection on defense or an offense based on the isolation of their playmakers, that make logical sense based on the team’s personnel.
So, how much will Griffin lean on some of those same principles? And how much will he try to break the Bucks of some of the habits they built under Budenholzer?
Sorting through those questions will be critical to building the strategies that the Bucks will lean on going forward.
How does Griffin build relationships with his players?
In a normal year, the front office and coaching staff connect with players in the week after the season during the exit interview process to recap the previous season and also give each player things to work on during the offseason. While Horst told reporters that he did go through that process with Bucks players in the days following the team’s playoff exit, the vision for the franchise has changed significantly since those meetings.
With a new coach, there will likely be new directives and most importantly, there will need to be significant relationship-building between Griffin and each of the Bucks players. To accomplish that, players may need to come back to Milwaukee (if they leave the city for the offseason) or Griffin might need to embark on a worldwide tour to track players down and discuss the future with them. For example, when Budenholzer was hired in 2018, he quickly made the journey to Greece to chat with Antetokounmpo and continued to make trips there during subsequent offseasons to check in on Antetokounmpo during the summer.
For Griffin to get on the same page as the players, he will need to make the same sort of effort.
