Getty Damian Lillard
For the Milwaukee Bucks, trading for Damian Lillard came at the cost of trading away Jrue Holiday. Lillard helps the Bucks’ halfcourt offense, but their defense has slipped this season. They allow 116.8 points per 100 possessions, good for No. 21 in defensive rating in the NBA, per NBA.com.
Former NBA Sixth Man of the Year Jamal Crawford explained on NBA on TNT what the difference is between Lillard and Holiday.
“[Damian Lillard] is a better scorer… But Jrue Holiday is a connector. Everybody loved him, the whole city [of Milwaukee] loved him,” Crawford said, which ClutchPoints aggregated in a video that has since been deleted.
Before the Bucks traded him to the Portland Trail Blazers, Holiday told Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he wanted to retire in Milwaukee. That’s how much Milwaukee meant to him in the three years he played for the Bucks.
Lillard is still relatively new in Milwaukee. The Trail Blazers traded him to the Bucks not too long before, so there’s still time. After the Bucks fired Adrian Griffin, Lillard could acclimate himself more with new coach Doc Rivers.
Damian Lillard Struggled Under Adrian Griffin: Report
After the Bucks fired Adrian Griffin, Damian Lillard’s struggles with the Bucks factored into their decision, per The Athletic.
According to The Athletic, league sources said that Lillard “spent much of this season struggling with the way the Bucks function on the offensive end.”
“While he had remained patient with coaches and teammates, there was an inevitable pressure on Griffin from the organization to make the most of Lillard’s talent in the kind of way that validates the choice to part ways with Jrue Holiday, Grayson Allen and three first-round picks in order to land him,” The Athletic reported on January 23.
Griffin’s inability to help Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo mesh as a duo was also an issue.
“For the season, Lillard’s usage rate of 26.9 is not only well below his final season in Portland (a career-high mark of 33.1) but well below Antetokounmpo’s rate of 32.2 that is third in the NBA (which is down from his league-leading mark of 37.3 last season),” The Athletic report read. “Griffin’s inability to create more on-court harmony among his best players on the offensive end remained a point of contention until Griffin’s end.”
Bucks Hire Doc Rivers as Adrian Griffin’s Replacement
After plenty of conflicting reports regarding whether Doc Rivers was their next coach or not, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski officially confirmed Rivers as Griffin’s replacement via his X account.
BREAKING: Doc Rivers is finalizing an agreement to become the next coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, sources tell ESPN. The Bucks are getting the coach they targeted over the past 24 hours.
Rivers is the fourth NBA head coach Damian Lillard has had. Terry Stotts was Lillard’s head coach from his rookie year in 2012 all the way until 2021. He then had Chauncey Billups as his head coach for two seasons. Then, of course, Griffin was his third.
Doc Rivers is the most successful head coach Lillard has played for in his NBA career. Rivers has won an NBA championship and has made multiple NBA Finals. However, Rivers has not experienced the same success with his previous teams that he had with the Boston Celtics. That could change with the Bucks.