The Bucks and Doc Rivers are ready for a break from each other — and it’s only been 10 games.
Rivers ripped his team after a 113-110 loss to the lowly Memphis Grizzlies on Thursday night, in the its final game before the All-Star break.
“We come back on our set, two guys forget what we’re running, then we miss a shot and nobody gets back. That’s how we start out the third quarter,” a seemingly disgusted Rivers said. “That tells you all you need to know about where our heads were.”
Rivers then added, shaking his head: “We had some guys here, we had some guys in Cabo.”
The Bucks are now 3-7 under Rivers — and this latest defeat was arguably their most damning, falling in a nationally televised nail-biter against the Grizzlies.
A Grizzlies team that literally had 10 players out with injuries.
The laundry list includes All-Star Ja Morant, who is out for the season with a shoulder injury, leading scorer Desmond Bane and reigning Defensive Player of the Year Jaren Jackson.
The Grizzlies, who are now 20-36 on the season, just snapped a nine-game losing streak Wednesday with a win over the Houston Rockets, making their win over Milwaukee the second of a back-to-back, whereas the Bucks had Wednesday night off after a 123-97 home loss to the Miami Heat on Tuesday.
Just earlier this week, the Bucks had an impressive 112-95 win over the defending NBA Champion Denver Nuggets, which gave them their first two-game winning streak since Jan. 24.
In between those efforts, the Bucks — sitting at 30-13 at the time — fired Adrian Griffin to hire Rivers.
The Bucks, who’ll be represented in the All-Star Game by both Giannis Antetokoumnpo and Damian Lillard, are 35-21 entering the break and third in the Eastern Conference.
According to Tankathon, the Bucks have the third toughest remaining strength of schedule in the NBA.
Currently, they’re 8 1/2 games behind the No. 1 seed Boston Celtics and have dropped to 2 1/2 games behind the second-seed Cleveland Cavaliers and four in the loss column.
The Bucks remain 1 1/2 and two games ahead of the sliding New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers, respectively, with the Heat, Indiana Pacers and Orlando Magic further back.
