On Monday, the Brooklyn Nets startled the NBA community by firing head coach, Jacque Vaughn.
Vaughn joined the Nets as an assistant in 2016 and took over as head coach after the team fired Steve Nash seven games into the 2022 season when the Nets were 2-5. Vaughn was able to right the ship and led Brooklyn to a 43-32 record (45-37 overall) and the sixth seed in the playoffs in the Eastern Conference.
But that season also saw the Nets trade Kyrie Irving to Dallas and Kevin Durant to Phoenix, leaving the team with players such as Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Nic Claxton and Spencer Dinwiddie.
No disrespect to those players, but to go from Irving and Durant to Bridges and Johnson would be hard for any coach. It’s one of the main reasons why Brooklyn was swept by the Sixers in the first round of the playoffs that season.
But ownership liked what they saw during that year and signed Vaughn to a multi-year extension through the 2026-27 season, which turned out to be the only real show of support they gave him.
This season, lacking the superstar power they had previously, the team started 12-9 but quickly fell to 15-15.
Brooklyn was also plagued by the injury bug, as Ben Simmons played in only 12 of Brooklyn’s 54 games this season and Johnson, Claxton and Thomas were also lost for numerous games.
Vaughn was further hampered when the team traded Dinwiddie to the Raptors for Denis Schroder and sent Royce O’Neale to the Suns.
Brooklyn showed some fight by beating the Sixers in Philadelphia on February 3rd, but that was the sole highlight over the next six games. The team went 1-5 during that stretch and got obliterated by a short-handed Celtics team, 136-86, before the All-Star break.
That performance, and a 21-33 record, were the nails in the coffin for Vaughn in Brooklyn.
“This was an incredibly difficult decision, but one we feel is in the best interest of the team going forward,” said Nets general manager Sean Marks in a statement Monday. “Jacque has represented this organization with exemplary character and class for the past eight years. The consistent positivity and passion he poured into our team daily will remain with the players and staff he interacted with throughout his tenure.”
Complimentary words for sure, but it’s a shame the on-the-court support from team management wasn’t as strong.
After evaluating the roster moves that the Nets made, it’s hard to see how Vaughn, or any coach for that matter, could have survived those decisions.
To lose both KD and Kyrie in the span of a week was devastating. Brooklyn was 32-20 before those moves and 13-17 afterward.
And while the Nets made the playoffs, there was no way they could contend with Joel Embiid, James Harden and the 76ers.
That’s why it feels like Vaughn was set up to fail this season.
It’s eerily reminiscent of the way the Jets treated Todd Bowles.
After starting 10-6, the Jets traded away talent and cut veterans, leaving Bowles little to work with. The team then went 5-11, 5-11 and 4-12 after which he was fired.
Vaughn faced a similar situation.
He watched two superstars be exchanged for good players while expectations from upstairs remained high. He did what he could and ran offenses with the limited talent he had. It worked for a little while, but teams eventually exploited their limitations and Brooklyn had no answers due to a lack of options.
That’s not fair to any coach, especially one who did everything he could to guide the team to the playoffs after being purged of true talent.
So now Brooklyn turns to Kevin Ollie as its interim head coach.
Ollie has no NBA head coaching experience, but he had a 13-year NBA career and won an NCAA title in 2014 with UConn, so he might be able to hold the team together as it dwells in the basement of the Eastern Conference.
Or he might be a temporary way of dealing with a much bigger problem.
But make no mistake. Vaughn was scapegoated for a bad season created by poor player personnel decisions and injuries.
And that just feels wrong.
