The Milwaukee Bucks are hiring Toronto Raptors assistant Adrian Griffin as the franchise’s next head coach, league sources told The Athletic on Saturday.
The decision to hire Griffin comes at the end of a three-week process of searching for a new head coach that started when general manager Jon Horst chose to fire head coach Mike Budenholzer on May 4.
“As we dive into the process and it evolves, obviously it becomes more narrow, but at this point, everything is and should be on the table,” Horst said on May 5. “We’re very much in a phase of gathering and collecting and who’s interested and what that very large candidate pool can be and then we’ll work from there.”
The search narrowed at the start of this week as the Bucks asked three candidates — Kenny Atkinson, Adrian Griffin and Nick Nurse — to make their way to Milwaukee for meetings with the team’s top decision-makers.
While all three candidates interviewed for the position with Horst, another factor became incredibly noteworthy late in the process: the finalists were also given the chance to meet individually with two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo at his River Hills, Wis. home on Tuesday, sources briefed on the matter said.