A preseason trip to India caused Indiana Pacers head coach Nate McMillan to withdraw from the Team USA coaching staff under Gregg Popovich.
Per Scott Agness of The Athletic, Nate McMillan explained that his first priority is the Pacers. As such, once a trip to India on October 4 and 5 for a preseason game against the Sacramento Kings was finalized, he had no choice but to back out of his assistant coaching duties for Team USA.
“My first priority is the Pacers,” McMillan said last month. “I committed to USA Basketball before I got the schedule next season for us. We will be traveling to India, and the goal medal game is Sept. 15. USA is supposed to be in that gold medal game, so I’m assuming we would be playing on September the 15th. I think they would be returning on the 16th or 17th and we would start training camp actually a week after returning, and then I would have to go back out of the country to India. And also, the fact that there’s so much going on with our team this summer that I just felt that I couldn’t do that.”
It's an understandable move by McMillan. After all, the Pacers performed relatively well despite the losing star guard Victor Oladipo in the latter part of the season. He cannot afford to lose sight of the team.
Team USA, for its part, replaced McMillan with Atlanta Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce. He'll join the Golden State Warriors' Steve Kerr and Villanova's Jay Wright as Popovich's assistants.
Follow Us
Subscribe