Report: Former Uconn coach Ollie taking over Nets after firing of Vaughn
Ten years ago, Kevin Ollie rose to the top of the basketball coaching A list with unfathomable speed, leading the Uconn men to a national championship no one expected, just 18 months after replacing Jim Calhoun.
Ollie seemed certain, given his NBA pedigree, for bigger and better things.
Then came a fall from the pinnacle, as fast and dizzying as his rise, a rough ending at Uconn and years of bitter dispute over his contract.
But to use an “Ollie-ism,” one of his signature phrases, the dream of coaching an NBA team was not denied, just delayed. The Brooklyn Nets, who fired Jacque Vaughn on Monday, will name Ollie their interim head coach, ESPN reported.
Ollie, 51, played for Uconn from 1991-95, then embarked on a long career in the NBA, 11 teams in 13 years, often stringing 10-day contracts together, but becoming a respected locker room leader. He returned to Uconn as an assistant coach, helping the Huskies win the national championship in 2011. He took over when Calhoun retired in September 2012, for a season in which the program was banned from the tournament due to sub-par academic performance, but won 20 games.
In 2013-14, he led the Huskies, as a No. 7 seed, back to the top, beating Tom Izzo’s Michigan State, Billy Donovan’s Florida and John Calipari’s Kentucky to get there.
Over the next couple of years, Ollie was linked to several NBA openings, but stayed put. Then the
Huskies had back-to-back losing seasons, the program’s first in 30 years, and the university moved in March 2018 to fire him for cause, citing NCAA infractions.
The NCAA eventually ruled that Ollie provided misleading information to its investigators and issued a three-year show-cause order, but Ollie won his arbitration case
with Uconn and collected all of the $11 million he was owed, plus legal expenses.
In the meantime, he took over as coach at Overtime Elite, a program that develops professional prospects who do not want to play college basketball. After leaving there, he was considered a front-runner for the Pistons job, but did not get it and joined the Nets this season as an assistant. The Pistons are 8-46.
Ollie was credited with sparking the team during a meeting in December, but the Nets are 21-33 after a 136-86 loss to the Celtics last Wednesday, in 11th place in the Eastern Conference. He is expected to be in charge when the Nets play at Toronto on Thursday. The Nets chose Ollie over another current assistant, Will Weaver.
It’s not clear if GM Sean Marks, who will be making his fourth head coaching hire, plans to go with Ollie for the remaining 28 games of the season, or pursue one of the more experienced coaches such as Mike Budenholzer, former head coach of the Bucks.