Brooklyn Nets assistant coach and former national champion Kevin Ollie will replace Jacque Vaughn and serve as interim head coach, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski (Shams Charania first reported him as the favorite). After being linked to the Los Angeles Lakers a decade ago, Ollie will finally be manning the sidelines of an NBA team.
The Nets dismissed Vaughn from HC duties on Monday after going 21-33 this year. All-Star break is in effect until Thursday, so there is probably no better time to make a midseason change than right now. Ollie joined the team last June after spending a couple years with Overtime Elite as the league's head of coaching and basketball development.
It has been a winding road back to The Association for the 51-year-old, who played for several NBA franchises from 1997 to 2010, including the then-New Jersey Nets. He rose to prominence in his second act, however.
Ollie worked under Hall of Fame head coach Jim Calhoun at UConn before taking over the reins in 2012. He did not take long to etch his name into the Huskies' history books, leading them to their fourth national championship in 2014. His meteoric rise gained him NBA coaching interest, but he decided to stay at the college level.
Ollie's time in Storrs did not end well, though. UConn fired him in 2018 after back-to-back losing seasons and refused to pay the remaining money left on his contract. The school claimed that alleged NCAA violations were the cause of its decision rather than performance. Kevin Ollie sued and ultimately received a hefty settlement.
The Nets' interim head coaching gig could be the perfect opportunity for him to remind people of his basketball acumen. Jacque Vaughn used the interim position as a springboard to the full-time HC job, so this move is definitely worth monitoring the rest of the year.
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