MILWAUKEE (AP) — Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers says the team isn’t putting any extra pressure on itself as it tries to bounce back from the franchise’s slowest start in three decades.
The Bucks (1-6) will try to snap a six-game skid Thursday against the Utah Jazz (1-6) while continuing to play without three-time All-Star forward Khris Middleton as he recovers from offseason surgery to each of his ankles.
“The worry is outside the building, I guarantee you that,” Rivers said Wednesday. “There’s none inside the building.”
Milwaukee’s slow start surely has delighted rival teams that would love to acquire two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo if he were to get disgruntled and request a trade. Antetokounmpo, who didn’t play in the Bucks’ 116-114 loss at Cleveland on Monday due to a strained adductor muscle, said the Bucks started taking some steps in the right direction 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 Saturday after a 114-113 home loss to Cleveland. “The ball is moving. There’s a lot of good things that we can do. That’s all we can control.”
Milwaukee won a title as recently as 2021, and the Bucks’ sense of urgency to get a second championship during Antetokounmpo’s prime has been evident for some time.
Former coach Mike Budenholzer was fired after the Bucks posted the NBA’s best regular-season record in 2022-23 but lost to Miami in the first round of the playoffs. Budenholzer was replaced by Adrian Griffin, who got fired midway through last season despite owning a 30-13 record. The Bucks have gone 18-25 since Rivers’ arrival, not including their 4-2 first-round playoff loss to Indiana last season.
Rivers insists there’s “zero pressing from us” and cited the decision to rest Antetokounmpo for Monday’s game to make sure the 6-foot-11 forward stayed as healthy as possible with the Bucks playing five games in a seven-day stretch. 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.”
The Bucks remain confident they can turn it around.
“You’re going to have these funks,” forward Bobby Portis said. “It’s just our funk came at the start of the season.”
The cause for concern is recent history showing how tough it is to bounce back from this kind of start. This marks the longest the Bucks have taken to earn their second win of a season since 1993-94, when they won their season opener and then dropped 10 straight. That team finished 20-62.
Twenty teams in NBA history have made the playoffs after winning no more than one of their first seven games, according to Sportradar, but only three 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, during an era when an overwhelming majority of teams made the playoffs.
Milwaukee should get a boost whenever Middleton returns, but nobody knows when that will be. Rivers was asked Wednesday if this is 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.”
Milwaukee has faced other obstacles as well.
The Bucks played six of their first eight games away from home. Three of their losses came to the defending champion Boston Celtics and the undefeated Cavaliers. The two games with the Cavs were decided by a combined three points.
Milwaukee is home for four of its next five games, which gives the Bucks an opportunity to recover.
“It can only go up from here,” Portis said. “It can’t get worse than what it is right now.”