Former UConn coach Kevin Ollie taking over Nets as interim coach
A decade after leading his alma mater to a national championship, Kevin Ollie is getting a shot in the NBA with the Nets as their interim head coach.
Ollie is replacing Jacque Vaughn, fired on Monday morning as the skidding Nets were showing no signs of improvement.
He will have his hands full.
The Nets are in a free fall, now in 11th place in the Eastern Conference having lost 23 of their previous 31 games.
In their final game before the All-Star break, they lost by 50 to the title-contending Celtics.
Still, the Nets are only 2 ¹/₂ games out of the final play-in spot, although the team has shown no signs of being capable of making a run at the postseason. Perhaps a new voice could change that.
The 51-year-old Ollie played 13 seasons in the NBA for 11 different teams (he played 19 games for the New Jersey Nets in the 2000-01 season) and coached Connecticut to the 2014 national championship.
But the Huskies struggled after that, failing to make the NCAA Tournament in 2016 and 2017 before his dismissal. He was issued a three-year show cause by the NCAA after his firing for numerous recruiting violations.
Ollie later coached with Overtime Elite, the new high school league that pays players, from 2021-23 before joining the Nets this year.
He is relatively inexperienced at the professional level as a coach. Before taking over at Connecticut, he was an assistant at the school under Jim Calhoun.
Ollie was a candidate for the Pistons’ head-coaching job last summer before the team hired Monty Williams.
He also interviewed for the Lakers’ job several years back.