It’s no longer just the Milwaukee Bucks that have let go of their head coach in the middle of the season. Jacque Vaughn, the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, was fired on Monday morning. With a terrible record of 21–22, Brooklyn is 2.5 games away of the final play-in position for the NBA Playoffs.It’s no longer just the Milwaukee Bucks that have let go of their head coach in the middle of the season. Jacque Vaughn, the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, was fired on Monday morning. With a terrible record of 21–22, Brooklyn is 2.5 games away of the final play-in position for the NBA Playoffs.
With Brooklyn’s decision to move on from Vaughn, their turbulent relationship comes to an end. In the 2016–17 campaign, Vaughn was first brought on by the Nets as head coach Kenny Atkinson’s top assistant. He held that position until Atkinson resigned as head coach in the middle of the 2020 campaign. For the remainder of the season, Vaughn was the acting head coach.
Steve Nash was appointed as the Nets’ next head coach one month prior to the 2020–21 season, and Vaughn took up his previous position as lead assistant. After Nash left the Nets in November 2022, Vaughn was once again named interim head coach. This time, in February 2023, Brooklyn offered him the full-time position rather than looking for a new applicant.
But the collaboration was short-lived, as Vaughn was let go almost exactly one year after agreeing to a contract with the Nets. Kevin Ollie, a former guard for the Milwaukee Bucks, is the lead assistant coach that Brooklyn is now trying to bring in to replace him.
Following Vaughn’s firing, the Nets aren’t going far in their search for a temporary head coach. The Nets are looking to their best assistant, Kevin Ollie, much like the Bucks did when they fired Adrian Griffin and temporarily replaced him with Joe Prunty as head coach before hiring Doc Rivers.
The 2014 UCONN Huskies, who won the NCAA Tournament, had Ollie as their head coach. Ollie was UCONN’s head coach from 2012 until his termination due to multiple NCAA infractions. A court of law determined in 2022 that Ollie had been wrongfully fired and that UCONN owed him millions of dollars in back salary.
