Brooklyn Nets general manager Sean Marks made some big changes, firing head coach Jacque Vaughn on Monday and promoting Kevin Ollie to interim head coach shortly after. This means that Marks will select his fourth coach since taking over as Nets general manager in February of 2016.
Since Marks took over the general manager role, the team has hired and fired Kenny Atkinson, Steve Nash and Vaughn over an eight-year period from rebuilding the team from the bottom to contending for championships to now being stuck somewhere in the middle. Marks has been criticized for the amount of coaching changes under his leadership coupled with the fact that the team appears to be in a precarious position following the trades of James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant over the past two seasons.
While Marks has made some good moves during his tenure, such as being able to bring the aforementioned stars to Brooklyn or draft picks like Cam Thomas and Nick Claxton, he has also guided the franchise to an uninspiring place at best. After much criticism from the fan base and the media, Marks made the difficult decision to fire Vaughn after nearly 1.5 seasons as head coach.
Many pointed to Brooklyn's 136-86 loss to the Boston Celtics on February 14 as the moment when Vaughn's job came into question and arguably when his bench became the hottest as players like Mikal Bridges expressed their dissatisfaction with the current state of the organization. Having already issued a statement thanking Vaughn for his efforts, Marks shed more light on the timing of Vaughn's firing during his press conference on Tuesday:
“I think it would be a bit silly to say, well, it was that and that was that. I think when you reach a turning point here and you've had the last two months, as I said before, quite frankly, we haven't gotten the results we want. Again, you look To the grand scheme of things and you look at the record over the last couple of months and you look at the direction of the team and where it's going, and this was an opportunity to make a change at this particular point. There wasn't a single event that I look back on and say, well, it was then or then or this, you know? “It's a set of (events), I would say we look at globally.”
Marks explained that the results under Vaughn, a 21-33 record before the All-Star break despite a 13-10 start, were not good enough for where the organization expects the team to be at the moment. Now that Ole has the chance to show what he can do, Marks will have to do what he can to turn this team around quickly because his bench may be heating up soon enough.
