Doc Rivers reacts to Milwaukee Bucks missing playoffs for first time since 2016

2026-03-29 · Yahoo Sports

Doc Rivers reacts to Milwaukee Bucks missing playoffs for first time since 2016 originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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For the first time since the 2015-16 season, the Milwaukee Bucks didn’t qualify for postseason play.

The Bucks were officially eliminated from the playoffs with their 127-95 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday night.

After the game, Bucks coach Doc Rivers pointed to a lack of health and a lack of star power as main factors in Milwaukee's lackluster season.

“It’s been disappointing, obviously. Since I’ve been here, I haven’t had a healthy stretch, and it’s been your key guys. It’s been Giannis. It’s been [Damian Lillard]. And you hope you can play through that, but we just haven’t had the ability,” Rivers said.

“This year, having only one quote-unquote star, every other team has two and three. We needed health. We were thin. We knew that before the season started, and it just didn’t go our way. All the talk and all that stuff probably didn’t help either.”

Rivers isn’t wrong. Star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo has missed a career-high 37 games so far this season and the team simply didn’t have enough top-tier talent to consistently compete otherwise.

Plus, the entire season for the Bucks seemed to be overshadowed by trade rumors involving Antetokounmpo, which had to be at least somewhat distracting.

But at the same time, fans in Milwaukee don’t wear to hear excuses from the coach about why the team didn’t get the job done. They just want to see the team take actionable steps toward improvement.

In the eyes of many, that would include moving on from Rivers, who is definitely on the hot seat on Milwaukee after such an underwhelming campaign. We'll have the wait and see if the front office decides to make a change.

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