Doc Rivers vs Rick Carlisle, Breaking Down Coaching Advantages in Bucks vs Pacers

The Milwaukee Bucks are locked into the fifth seed in the eastern conference, meaning they will face the Indiana Pacers once again in the first round of the NBA playoffs. While the players on the court are the driving force of how the series shakes out, the coaches also have a huge impact.

The Bucks have Doc Rivers, who has a ton of experience, including in the playoffs, dating all the way back to a championship victory with the 2008 Boston Celtics. However, Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle is also battle-tested, winning a championship with the Dallas Mavericks back in 2011.

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Both also have experience as NBA players, making their overall coaching paths and careers quite similar on paper.

Rivers has been coaching since the 1999-2000 season, in which he led the Orlando Magic to a 41-41 record and won coach of the year. Besides two years in Boston in 2006 and 2007, Rivers has coached his team to a winning record in every full season he has coached. He has for the most part had great rosters throughout his career, but it is still impressive nonetheless.

However, Rivers is also known for coaching teams that blew leads or didn’t finish as well as people expected them to. The Celtics, while they did win a championship, were expected to win multiple. The Clippers had a great roster but never even reached the Western Conference finals. Really since losing in the 2009-10 NBA finals, he hasn’t been able to lead his team anywhere close to the ultimate goal.

Carlisle started off as an assistant much earlier than Rivers, but broke onto the scene as a head coach around a similar time as Rivers, starting off with the Detroit Pistons in the 2001-2002 season.

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Ironically, he won the coach of the year in his first season too after leading the Pistons to a 50-32 record. Unfortunately for Carlisle, he too had a bit of a struggle to lead his team to the promised land, with the Pistons winning the NBA title just a season after he was fired.

In terms of experience, both coaches are eerily similar making it hard to discern an advantage for one or the other. However, Rivers seems to have done less with more, while Carlisle has done more with less, which is evident based on the teams each have had in the past, as well as their teams this year.

The Pacers have more depth than the Bucks, but the Bucks have more top-end talent. Top-end talent usually wins out in the playoffs, but for this coaching matchup, it may not. While it is extremely close, Carlisle has a slight coaching advantage for this matchup.

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