Nash adds D’Antoni to coaching staff
On Friday, the Nets announced two more assistant coaches would be joining the Brooklyn Nets’ staff.
Nash’s bench will now also include former Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni, as well as head coaching candidate and former Spurs assistant Ime Udoka, according to ESPN. His bench will also include Jacque Vaughn, who was in the mix for the Nets’ head coaching position but now serves as one of the NBA’s highest-paid assistant coaches.
The Nets hired Nash as a firsttime head coach to lead the Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving Nets to a championship. The rookie coach is settling in by adding familiar faces close by: former teammate Amar’e Stoudemire was his first hire as a player development coach.
The D’Antoni-Nash connection is obvious, dating to the mid 2000s when D’Antoni coached Nash in Phoenix. Nash won back-toback league Most Valuable Player awards under D’Antoni’s lead in 2005 and 2006. He and D’Antoni together created the Seven Seconds or Less Suns offense that revolutionized basketball after its inception.
D’Antoni most recently spent time in Houston, where he won 68% of his games over the past four seasons, the most successful of which resulted in a trip to the Western Conference finals. His Rockets, though, were too heavily reliant on the 3-pointer and analytics, and never made it past the second round of the playoffs in any of the other three seasons of his tenure.
Udoka spent seven seasons in San Antonio as an assistant coach under Gregg Popovich. He spent last season as an assistant coach on Brett Brown’s staff in Philadelphia and interviewed for the Knicks job that eventually went to Tom Thibodeau.
Udoka was defensive coordinator for a Sixers defense anchored by Joel Embiid, one of the best rim protectors in basketball. The Nets have two more-than-capable big men in DeAndre Jordan and Jarrett Allen, but management will likely pursue ways to upgrade the roster this offseason, specifically at the wing and forward spots.
Nash also attempted to hire former Dallas Mavericks start Dirk Nowitzki as an assistant coach, but Nowitzki reportedly turned the job down because he’s not ready to coach just yet — if he was, he said he would start in Dallas where his career lasted two decades.
Nash said in both his introductory press conference and his town hall discussion this week that defense will be top priority for the Nets this season and that it’s something the coaching staff has been building on over the past few weeks. Nash and D’Antoni, however, are best known for their contributions on the offensive end of the court. It’s difficult to envision them becoming defensive specialists overnight.
That may not be necessary.
What’s necessary is luck. The Nets have one of the NBA’s most talented rosters, and at this point, health is the true No. 1 priority.