Myles Turner said the Milwaukee Bucks played through a season of loose discipline under Doc Rivers, with players arriving late, skipping meetings and not getting fined. Turner said Rivers did not punish anyone for being late during the 2025-26 season, and he described the routine as unlike anything he had seen in 10 NBA seasons before arriving in Milwaukee.
“Doc Rivers, he didn’t fine anybody, ever,” Turner said, adding that teammates were “late all the time,” showed up to film whenever they wanted and missed meetings. “It was one of the craziest things I’ve personally ever experienced,” he said, noting that on previous teams, players were fined for being late to the plane, treatment or film. Turner also said the Bucks were sometimes so delayed that if the plane was set to leave at 2 o’clock, “we weren’t leaving until 4:30.”
The comments land against the backdrop of a season that ended in disappointment for Milwaukee. The Bucks finished 32-50 and missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade, while Giannis Antetokounmpo played in only 36 games, the fewest in his 13-year NBA career. Rivers stepped down immediately after the season, and the Bucks hired Taylor Jenkins as their new coach on April 30.
Turner’s account also lines up with what Rivers later said publicly on April 17, when he acknowledged on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” that he had been “very lax” about holding everyone accountable for being on time that year. Rivers had served as Milwaukee’s coach for the previous 2 1/2 seasons, but Turner said the lack of structure during last season was unlike any environment he had been around before.
That matters because Turner’s first year in Milwaukee was also one of the franchise’s most unsettled. The Bucks dealt with drama over Antetokounmpo’s future throughout the season, and Turner said the star forward was the biggest offender when it came to showing up late. “Giannis is gonna show up whenever he wants, really,” Turner said. For a team that spent the year trying to stabilize itself, the problem was not just losses on the court. It was the absence of accountability in the building.
Turner arrived in Milwaukee for his first season with the Bucks after spending his first 10 NBA seasons with the Indiana Pacers. What he described was not a one-off lapse, but a system in which lateness became normal and no one paid a price. Now Milwaukee has a new coach in Jenkins, and the question is whether the Bucks can rebuild standards quickly enough to match the urgency of a roster that has already spent a year drifting.
