Vaughn’s extension proof Nets back on right track
THIS was early in the summer of 1997, and Jacque Vaughn was busy regaling a gaggle of teenagers inside Phog Allen Fieldhouse about the various wonders of the sport of basketball. The kids were starry-eyed — Vaughn had just completed a distinguished four years as a Kansas Jayhawk. He was soon to fly to Salt Lake City to begin an 11-year career in the NBA.
“Look at those eyes,” Roy Williams said. “They’re fixed on his every word.”
Williams was sitting in one of the upper grandstands, and he was marveling at what he was watching. Before you read what Williams said next, please remember that in addition to being a Hall of Fame coach himself, Roy Williams had worked for 11 years at the right arm of a fairly accomplished basketball coach named Dean Smith.
“From the first practice here,” Williams said, “I remember telling my wife, ‘I’ve never seen a more natural coach in my life.’ ”
“You mean ‘point guard,’ right?” Wanda Williams had replied.
“Coach,” Williams asserted.
The coaching career might not have enjoyed the natural ascent that Roy Williams prescribed for Jacque Vaughn that day nearly 26 years ago, but on Tuesday the Nets rewarded Vaughn for an excellent three months of work by extending his contract through the 2026-27 season.
Now, in the NBA, the whims of the coached are often more valued than the talents of the coach, but in the let’s-take-a-mulligan era in which the Nets now reside, it sure feels like we know with certainty who will be the coach for the foreseeable future.
The fact that it also happens to be an excellent choice is gravy.
“I’ve seen it all here,” Vaughn said Wednesday afternoon, laughing. “The bubble. A toe on the line. Trade requests. I think this is a response to the way I carried myself on a daily basis, people appreciated it.”
Another laugh.
“I kept showing up.”
He has been here through all of it. He replaced Kenny Atkinson on an interim basis in the odd pandemic summer, but if Atkinson didn’t have enough gravitas for the Nets’ stars/assistant GMs, Vaughn wasn’t going to have it, either. He stuck around even after Steve Nash was hired as head coach with zero experience. He was there when it finally blew up on Nash.
And Vaughn has been a revelation since he moved a few seats closer to midcourt after Nash was finally fired. He was the man who kept the Nets from imploding during the Kyrie Irving suspension. He was the one who guided them to an 18-2 stretch after that, which may well have been the most prosperous quarter-season sample size in the Nets’ NBA history.
And he has been there for the various iterations since the roster was thrown upside down. Through it all, the Nets who have remained and who have arrived have mirrored their coach: They’re professional, they show up for work, they put in an honest day’s labor. Day after day after day.
“It’s a huge acknowledgment,” Vaughn said, “knowing my voice and direction going forward, leaning into living this grind and the challenge ahead.”
In many ways, the Nets have scripted this like that famous old “Dallas” plot, when it turned out Bobby Ewing wasn’t dead, that it was all a dream.
Same deal with the past 3 ½ years. The players they have procured, the coach they have hired, it’s as if Joe Tsai and Sean Marks have done what they can to pretend this is a few days after the Game 5 loss to the Sixers back in 2019, when it seemed the Nets were gathering real momentum, building a true infrastructure. All of what happened next?
Poof!
A dream, all of it. Only instead of Patrick Duffy in the shower, there’s Jacque Vaughn on the bench.
And that’s a good thing in this new era of good feeling in Brooklyn. Gone are the stars, and so gone is the national following. These are the Brooklyn Nets again, a team the locals can embrace. Maybe the ceiling, for now, isn’t what it was a month ago. But Barclays Center sure seems like a more appealing place to spend three hours now. A bunch of lunch-pail guys, and a lunch-pail coach, showing up for work every day. We’ve had our fun piling on the Nets in recent years. Not this time. This time, they got it exactly right.