After having already reshaped their roster, now the Nets are in the midst of tweaking their coaching staff. And a quick glance at the outgoing and incoming assistants brings two words to mind: diversity and development.
General manager Sean Marks and head coach Jacque Vaughn are not only transitioning from a mostly white staff to one with more representation, and also from one designed to help support a Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving-led contender to one suited to mold and maximize the still-improving players now on the roster.
“What was needed? What was some of the blind spots? What were some things that were missing?” Marks asked rhetorically last month. “You diagnose your staff. What’s needed? What does it look like going forward? So different progressions of really some self-evaluation.”
With Vaughn now starting a four-year extension, what is needed is giving him his preferred assistants, moving away from holdovers picked by his predecessor and favored by their departed superstars.
Steve Nash had eight assistants, of which Vaughn was the lead. Now, Vaughn has six.
Despite Yahoo! Sports’ report of former Hornets head coach James Borrego being in the mix, the Nets went in a different direction by bringing in Ronnie Burrell, Jay Hernandez and Kevin Ollie over the past few weeks to join holdovers Adam Caporn, Ryan Forehan-Kelly and Trevor Hendry.
Caporn is well-regarded, and it’s notable that despite former Nets assistant Tiago Splitter’s previous career as an NBA big man, it was Forehan-Kelly who flew to Texas to work with center Nic Claxton.
Assistant Royal Ivey left for Houston, while the Nets didn’t renew the contracts of veterans Splitter, Brian Keefe and Igor Kokoskov. Keefe was with Durant in Oklahoma City, and Kokoskov — a former head coach with the Suns — was a Nash confidant, working with Vaughn’s predecessor as an assistant in Phoenix from 2008-12.
As Vaughn becomes more entrenched, he’s surrounded less by assistants favored by his stars or predecessor and more by assistants noted for player development.
“As Jacque said, it’s going to be important to see how these guys develop over the summer, what they do,” Marks said. “I don’t think we’ve seen the best of our core group yet. They’re young enough that they should still be developing, and that to me is exciting, when you get them around our coaching team, our performance team.”
Burrell was the G-League Coach of the Year this season with Long Island, where he’s said development was his No. 1 priority. Hernandez was noted for player development while with Charlotte. And while Ollie does not have NBA coaching experience, his reputation precedes him as a developer of talent and as a leader.
Ollie coached UConn to the 2014 NCAA title and spent the past two years at Overtime Elite, by definition a development program for the NBA where he molded twins Amen and Ausar Thompson into expected lottery picks who both could go in the top 10 later this month.
Ollie also showed leadership skills even as an NBA player, with ex-teammates Durant and Jeff Green having praised him for guiding their Thunder team.
“Man, leadership, great leadership qualities,” Green, now playing for the Nuggets, said during the NBA Finals. “I had him as a vet when I was in OKC, and obviously with his connection through UConn, we always had great stories to go back-and-forth.
“With his leadership, his poise, his ability to communicate with people, it’s amazing. He’ll be a perfect fit [with the Nets], especially with the young guys that they have there now. He’ll be able to get to them, to have good conversation with them, to get them to do what’s necessary for them to turn the corner on that. … It’s all about being able to communicate and have a relationship with your players, and obviously he’s had great success in doing that.”