Just two weeks ago, the Indiana Pacers signed then head coach Nate McMillan to a contract extension, but now it’s been officially announced that the organization fired him.
On the latest Locked On Pacers Podcast, hosts Tony East and Adam Friedman make sense of this decision.
Tony East: They have [McMillan’s] playoff record 17-36 in the official release of his firing, and I think that, even beyond any expectations they had in the bubble, I think they look back at three sweeps in four years and think that’s not good enough.
The extension as Adrian Wojnaroswki and Zach Lowe reported today was less of a contract extension and they just added a team option at the end of his deal and kind of picked up an option they already had. So it was less of an extension and more of just ‘we’re planning to more forward with him.’ But… because it was a soft extension, that makes it easy to turn around when the team doesn’t do well and say ‘ok, you’re not the right guy for this job’ even if he’s had a bunch of regular season success they have higher standards for where the team is right now.
Adam Friedman: It might look bad that they gave him an extension and fired him basically, but it also sends a message that weren’t just going to be okay with what happened in the playoffs. We both agree that they probably weren’t going to win that series, but if it went to six or seven games and it was respectable and they had a shot…
Tony: He has a job right now, 100%
Adam: He probably still has his job. One of the things that maybe concerned the team they just didn’t have any game plan and the only plan was to play the [Victor Oladipo] and the starters 45 minutes, and they’re fortunate that Vic didn’t suffer some kind of injury playing that many minutes when he hadn’t really done that in so long.
It was good that [Oladipo] could do that, I think played 40 something in the last two playoff games… But that’s not really a good game plan for a team that was trying to say before the bubble, ‘we don’t want to push Vic, we’re going to minute restrict him, it’s gonna be okay, we’re not going to push him to this level’ and they were playing him 38 minutes per game basically. That’s not a good sign.
It just sends a message that you’re not ok with the way things are going.
The Pacers have made the NBA Playoffs in all three years under Nate McMillan, but they have lost in the first round every season. They were swept in 2017 by the Cleveland Cavaliers, in 2019 by the Boston Celtics, and then this season by the Miami Heat.
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