Mcmillan wary of leading Hawks
Nate Mcmillan reluctantly agreed to serve as the Atlanta Hawks’ interim coach and only accepted the position after conferring with Lloyd Pierce following Pierce’s firing on Monday.
Even then, Mcmillan didn’t rest easy. He immediately felt the burden of his increased responsibility.
“The sleepless nights have already started,” Mcmillan said Tuesday. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night.”
Mcmillan said before his debut as interim coach in Tuesday night’s game at Miami that he initially wasn’t interested when Hawks president Travis Schlenk extended the offer to serve as interim coach.
Mcmillan, who was fired last year following four seasons as the Indiana Pacers coach, said he wasn’t looking for another opportunity to lead a team when he agreed to serve on Pierce’s staff.
Even as others saw Mcmillan as the logical successor for Pierce, he had other ideas. He didn’t expect Pierce to be fired and wasn’t ready to take over the Hawks.
“The thought process at first was that wasn’t something I really was going to do, because it was really a surprise to me,” Mcmillan said.
Mcmillan, 56, played 12 years in the NBA with Seattle and has logged 16 seasons, posting a 661-588 record, as a head coach with Seattle, Portland and Indiana. Even with so much experience, he was caught off-guard by the unexpected opportunity to revive the Hawks’ disappointing season.
He wasn’t ready to talk about the possibility of being more than an interim coach in Atlanta.
“I’m going to take this — and you guys are going to hear me say this as much as you ask — one game at a time,” he said.
The Hawks were 14-20 and 11th in the Eastern Conference entering Tuesday night’s game.
Mcmillan said he believes the Hawks have enough talent to make it to the playoffs.
“I think we are capable of doing some good things here,” Mcmillan said. “We certainly need to get healthy, but yes. … We’ve just got to show that growth, show that improvement and get it done.”
Two-way contract rule to be eased
The NBA has moved closer to a deal where players on two-way contracts would be eligible to appear on the active roster for as many games as their teams would like this season, a person with knowledge of the situation said Tuesday.
The proposal to lift what was a 50-game limit on the active roster for two-way players got overwhelming support Tuesday and is likely to be passed by the NBA’S board of governors, said the person who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity . The approval is expected later this month.
The NBA relaxed the rule on two-way players for this season in anticipation of postponements and rosters being taxed by virus-related issues. The rule in past years has been that twoway players could spend 45 days with the NBA club and the rest of the time with a franchise’s G League team. But with a shortened G League season and not all teams having clubs in that league this season, there were obvious reasons to change.