Bucks vs. Nuggets prediction: NBA odds, best bet for Doc Rivers’ debut

There was a reason the Milwaukee Bucks fired head coach Adrian Griffin last week, despite Griffin boasting a gaudy 30-13 record in his first year.

With a ready-made championship-level team, Bucks brass needed experience to bring it home. Enter Doc Rivers, who makes his Milwaukee coaching debut Monday night in Denver.

The Bucks and Nuggets each enter the game having won four out of their last five games.

It will be interesting to see the effect Rivers has on the Bucks, especially with their defensive intensity in the coach’s first game on the sidelines after being mostly an observer in his first week on the job.

Sometimes there’s an “impress the new guy” bump a team gets in its first game with the new guy in place. Even if this is true, will it be enough – for one night at least – to overcome the defensive inefficiencies the Bucks have shown all season?

We examine this and more in our betting preview of Monday night’s Bucks vs. Nuggets showdown in Denver.

No matter what changes Rivers makes – and some of it will be purely a mindset and intensity correction – it will be the offense that continues to carry this team, and the scary part is, the NBA’s most efficient unit can get even better.

While their numbers don’t necessarily reflect it, Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo haven’t gelled the way we thought they would when Lillard was traded to the Bucks on the eve of training camp. The pick-and-roll that could potentially be deadly has been a work in progress, to say the least.

Lillard is averaging more than 25 points per game but is shooting below his career average from the floor, and he has shot particularly poorly from 3-point range (34.5% compared to his 37.1% career average). Clearly, he is not feeling comfortable yet in Milwaukee, and it will be Rivers’ job to figure out what’s happening to his All-Star point guard.

More than halfway through the regular season, time is not on Rivers’ side, but it’s been done before. Here are the three previous examples:

• Tyronn Lue won a championship with the Cavaliers in 2015-16 after replacing David Blatt, who – eerily similar to Griffin – had a 30-11 record when he was dismissed.
• When Pat Riley took over the Heat after Stan Van Gundy “stepped down” 21 games into the 2005-06 season, the Miami team president rode Dwyane Wade to an NBA title.
• In 1979-80, Paul Westhead became the first coach to step in for another during the season and win a title. He did it with the Lakers, who were forced to make a change after Jack McKinney got into a serious bike accident and couldn’t continue.

Can Rivers be the fourth coach to do it? He has the pieces, which is why he says he took the job in the first place. And while his playoff record is spotty at best, he does have a championship and knows how to handle strong personalities and superstar athletes.

He inherits a team that for the last week or so has shown it can defend when it wants to, although teams have been shooting lights out against them from deep of late.

The Bucks have held four consecutive opponents to 117 or fewer points, and while that might not seem impressive, it represents an almost five-point improvement over their season average and closer to what they averaged a year ago (113.9) when they were a dominant defensive team.

On offense, Milwaukee is starting to stroke it from beyond the arc, shooting almost 40% from 3 over its last 10 games.

While Rivers was mostly brought in for his championship pedigree and leadership, and his clear marching orders are to fix a broken defense, keeping things going on offense is part of the plan as well.

Meanwhile, the Nuggets must be taking cues from the Bucks as their defense has fallen off since the calendar turned to 2024. Like the Bucks, Denver has been having problems stopping the opponents from scoring at the rim, and their perimeter defense has fallen off in recent weeks.

These teams’ recent up-and-down play – plus Denver’s middling against-the-spread record at home this season (11-10-1) – makes an ATS pick a bit of an adventure.

Instead, let’s focus on the total. Neither team has shown an ability over long stretches to defend. Jamal Murrray and Michael Porter Jr. should be able to feast from beyond the arc against Milwaukee’s defense, and Antetokounmpo should have his way inside against Denver.

And while Milwaukee is third in the NBA in pace, Denver is a plodding 29th, and they’ve been cashing the under at a league-leading 61.7% of the time this season, with nearly equal home-road splits.

And the Bucks have been underdogs twice – both on the road – in games the under hit. This will be the third time as Denver (-4) is a two-score favorite.

All of which brings us back to Rivers. While not having their defensive woes fixed overnight, expect the Bucks to at least give an honest effort in their new boss’ debut.