Bucks hope the connection between Giannis and Damian Lillard and more health will lead to a ‘dominant’ season

MILWAUKEE — Last season, on Jan. 27, Doc Rivers was officially introduced as head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.

At the time of his press conference at the Fiserv Forum that Saturday morning, the Bucks were 31-14 and getting ready to play the New Orleans Pelicans on the second night of a back-to-back. The Bucks finished the regular season with a 49-33 record, with Rivers posting a 17-19 mark after taking over. Ultimately, the sixth-seeded Indiana Pacers scored a first-round upset over the third-seeded Bucks, as Giannis Antetokounmpo missed the entire series and Damian Lillard played in just two of the six playoff games.

After winning the franchise’s second NBA Championship in 2021, the first-round exit marked the Bucks’ third straight early playoff elimination, as well as the third straight season in which one of their three most important players had the biggest missed part of their final playoff series. In 2022, Khris Middleton missed the Bucks’ entire second-round series against the Boston Celtics. In 2023, Antetokounmpo played in just nine quarters of the team’s first-round exit against the No. 8 seed Miami Heat.

With his first full season in Milwaukee about to get underway, Rivers had a simple answer to the biggest challenge he faced.

“Health is not my challenge, but it is our challenge as a team,” Rivers said. “We want to reach the play-offs healthy.”

For the Bucks, that would be a huge first step in their bid to win an NBA title. Being healthy at the end of the regular season as the team heads into the playoffs will be key, especially with an experienced roster, but Rivers admitted that isn’t the only thing he will be focusing on.

“We want to be dominant all season and play well all season,” Rivers said. “So for me it’s more about the connection of our team. The better the continuity we can have through the year, through training camp, (the better). That is one of the reasons why we go to camp, because that is an important point of attention for us. I believe that with what we get back and what we bring in, we have enough, but it only works if we do it as a group and together with one spirit.”

After Monday’s media day session, the Bucks headed to the University of California-Irvine for the first five days of training camp. When asked Monday about the decision to go to California, Rivers claimed camping on the road was an idea that struck him just over a week after taking over as head coach last season.

“I decided I was literally here for 10 days, I’m not kidding,” Rivers said. “I actually wrote that down 10 days after I took the job. We have to run this team away. I use the example several times, but think of Dame. I always use last year. Queen is traded. Does camp come in the day before, practice the next day, and what does he do after practice? Goes back to the hotel. Giannis goes home. Khris Middleton goes home. All players go home. No connection. And that happens and then the season starts.

“I think it’s important that they ride together in the car to and from training, go to dinners and spend time together. I wish it was longer, honestly… But from a team perspective, the longer they are together (the better). It’s nice that our first game is on the way, so it expands it a little bit, you know? No families. No friends around. Just us. I think that’s good for our team.”

Continuing construction of the connection between Antetokounmpo and Lillard will be an important part of that project for Rivers. As GM Jon Horst told it The Athletics he would re-make the trade that brought Lillard to Milwaukee a few days before training camp, the organization didn’t deny how difficult it was for the Bucks to try to merge the offensive skills of two superstars at once.

“I think we’re in a really, really good place right now,” Antetokounmpo said. “We never had a player like him before. It’s just something you understand slowly, slowly over time. It’s definitely hard when I’m 29 and he’s 34 at this point in our career to kind of change the habits you’ve created, but if you want to win, you have to do that. I think both of us – me, him and the rest of our team – are willing to do whatever it takes to win.”

After the Bucks’ first-round exit last season, Antetokounmpo told reporters that after recovering from the left soleus (calf) injury that kept him out of the playoffs, he would head to Portland to play with Lillard train and go to Portland. know him better. Antetokounmpo announced Monday that this did not happen, as his summer was filled with rehabbing the injury, training for the Olympics, representing Greece in the Olympics and marrying his longtime partner, Mariah Riddlesprigger, in Greece.

Giannis Antetokounmpo is entering his twelfth season with the Bucks. (Benny Sieu/USA Today Network via Imagn images)

While Antetokounmpo and Lillard not meeting could make headlines, Lillard downplayed its significance. Instead, he explained that it was far more important that the Bucks’ superstar duo were on the same page communication-wise, revealing that he believes they made a breakthrough during last season’s playoffs, even with both of them sidelined stood.

“I think subconsciously we are who we are because of how stubborn we are and how much we believe in what we believe,” Lillard said Monday. “And I’ve never played with a player of his level. He’s never played with a point guard like me. So I think it took a while for it to get to the point where I’m going to say what I need to say to you, and it doesn’t have to be negative or like I’m coming at you, but I can say know that you will take it as what I think is best, and vice versa.

“And I think we’ve had enough conversations about things like that, but I think as it got later in the season, we started having more and more conversations. And then at one point in the playoffs, I think it might have been Game 4 in Indiana, we both missed that game. Everyone went outside to warm up, and me and him were the only two people in the locker room. And I told him, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you and I have to connect. We have to get something done.’ And he agreed. And once he agreed, the conversation went in a completely different direction after that. It became a much more open conversation. From there it just went into summer and communication. And I think that’s more important than us going on the field, training together and all that stuff.

“You can train until you’re blue in the face, and (once) as soon as I say something in a game or he says something in a game and it doesn’t register or it doesn’t get received, then it’s not going to work out how you want it to it works. But I think the communication was open, and I think that was the most important thing.”

In addition to knowing each other better and having a more open line of communication, Lillard echoed many of the same sentiments he shared after the final game of his first season with the Bucks about what a real offseason could do for him in 2024-2025. Before last season, Lillard did not train or prepare for the season as he normally would as he waited for the Portland Trail Blazers to find out if they were going to trade him.

That wasn’t the case this season.

“My teammates and my coaches are getting the real version of me this year,” Lillard said. “And that’s without putting expectations on myself, I just know what kind of year I had and I know what kind of summer I had (last year) and what preparation I had, and they will be the real version of me to get. That’s really all I can say.”

After all the talking was done, the Bucks finished their media day responsibilities and headed west. As revealed by the team on Monday, Middleton will start training camp on a somewhat limited basis following offseason ankle surgery, meaning Rivers’ job of getting the team healthy into the postseason has already begun before camp even opened. The rest of the work – the work needed to create and maintain the connection necessary to form a truly great team – began as soon as the players boarded the team plane Monday afternoon.

GO DEEPER

Middleton will be limited in Bucks camp following ankle surgery

And it will remain that way until the 2024-2025 season ends.

“All week it will be just us together, whether it’s at the gym or at the hotel or whatever restaurant or activity we go to, we’ll always be together,” Bucks center Brook Lopez said. “Just being together, hanging out … as long as we’re there together and fostering that community and that culture, I think it’s definitely a benefit for us to spend as much time together as possible. So being on the road will be big for us.”

Let the journey begin.

(Photo by Damian Lillard: Benny Sieu/USA Today Network via Imagn Images)