NBA All-Star Weekend was completed on Sunday night with the Eastern Conference defeating the Western Conference in record-setting fashion, 211-186. It didn’t take long for the league to get back to business, as the Brooklyn Nets made a major move on Monday morning.
According to Ian Begley of SNY.tv , the Nets have decided to fire head coach Jacque Vaughn. Begley is reporting the move was made because players on the team were losing confidence in Vaughn during the team’s recent struggles. Also, some within the organization believed Vaughn as head coach could hinder their chances of landing a star player in the future.
Brooklyn has been playing poorly on the court in recent weeks. They have a record of 21-33 and are in 11th place in the Eastern Conference, 2.5 games behind the 10th-place Atlanta Hawks for the final spot in the NBA Play-In Tournament.
Through mid-December, Brooklyn looked like they would be competing for a playoff spot. They were 13-10 and right in the mix, but they have fallen on tough times. Since that point, the team has gone 8-23 and sunk in the standings.
After moving out of their Big 3 phase and trading James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, it should come as no surprise that the team’s performance has taken a step back. Replacing players of that caliber is not easy and the Nets are experiencing that the hard way.
Firing Vaughn midseason certainly seems odd, especially given the direction the team is currently heading in. But, if the reports from Begley are true, a change needed to be made if Vaughn had lost the locker room.
In his tenure as head coach over parts of three different seasons, the Nets went 71-68 under Vaughn. His first stint was in 2020 when he took over for Kenny Atkinson. Last season, he replaced Steve Nash as head coach 10 games into the campaign and the team. Overall, the team went 0-8 with Vaughn as their head coach in the postseason.
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