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The Brooklyn Nets have replaced fired Jacque Vaughn with Kevin Ollie, who has been named the team’s interim head coach for the remainder of the 2023-24 season. 

Ollie, a former journeyman NBA guard, has served as an ᴀssistant in Brooklyn under Vaughn for the last two seasons. 

Previously he guided Connecticut to a national тιтle in 2014 but was later fired by his alma mater in 2018 amid allegations of NCAA rules violations. 

The Nets announced Vaughn’s departure Monday.

‘This was an incredibly difficult decision, but one we feel is in the best interest of the team going forward,’ general manager Sean Marks said in a statement. ‘Jacque has represented this organization with exemplary character and class for the past eight years. The consistent positivity and pᴀssion he poured into our team daily will remain with the players and staff he interacted with throughout his tenure.’ 

The Brooklyn Nets have replaced fired Jacque Vaughn with ex-UConn coach Kevin Ollie

Jacque Vaughn has been dismissed as head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, the team announced

Ollie’s once-promising coaching career was derailed in 2018 when he was fired at UConn. 

The former UConn point guard was let go after two losing seasons. UConn also stopped paying him under his contract, citing numerous NCAA violations in terminating the deal.

In 2019, the NCAA placed UConn on probation for two years and Ollie was sanctioned individually for violations, which the NCAA found occurred between 2013 and 2018. Ollie’s attorneys, Jacques Parenteau and William Madsen, accused UConn of making false claims to the NCAA for the purpose of firing Ollie ‘with cause.’

The school had argued that Ollie’s transgressions were serious and that his individual contract superseded those union protections.

Ollie’s lawyers had argued that white coaches, including Hall-of-Famers Jim Calhoun and women’s coach Geno Auriemma, had also committed NCAA violations, without being fired, and indicated they were planning to file a federal civil rights lawsuit.

In 2022, UConn agreed to pay Ollie another $3.9 million to settle discrimination claims surrounding his 2018 firing. 

Brooklyn GM Sean Marks thanked Vaughn for his ‘exemplary character and class’

The Nets dropped five of their last six games before the break to fall to 21-33, putting them in 11th place in the Eastern Conference. Their 136-86 loss to the Celtics on Wednesday was their worst defeat since leaving New Jersey in 2012 and the second-worst in franchise history, and leading scorer Mikal Bridges seemed particularly frustrated in his postgame comments.

Vaughn finished 71-68 with the Nets, guiding them into the playoffs on two separate stints.

Vaughn replaced the fired Steve Nash on Nov. 1, 2022, and quickly led the Nets from a poor start toward the top of the East. Brooklyn went 12-1 that December and 43-32 the rest of the season, making the playoffs despite trading Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving during the season.

Both Durant (Phoenix) and Irving (Dallas) were traded last season, leaving the cupboard somewhat bare for Vaughn in 2023-24.

The Nets do have star forward Mikal Bridges, whom they acquired in the Durant deal and have reportedly refused to move in any subsequent trades. 

However, Bridges is not quite an elite scorer, and even at his current clip of 21.7 points a game, the Nets rank only 19th in offensive efficiency.

The Nets’ cupboard was left bare after the team traded Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant last year

Vaughn now has a career record of 129-226 over parts of six seasons with the Orlando Magic and Brooklyn Nets.  

But Brooklyn’s lack of star power this season has been apparent, and Vaughn lamented last week the minutes restrictions that have kept Ben Simmons and some of his other top players from staying on the floor long enough to give the Nets a better chance to be compeтιтive.

The Nets got off to a 15-15 start this season, but things began to turn when Vaughn made a curious decision to barely play or entirely rest all his top players during a 144-122 home loss to Milwaukee on Dec. 27. The NBA fined the Nets $100,000, the first time a team was sanctioned for violating the league’s player participation policy that went into effect this season.

Vaughn got his first chance to coach the Nets in March 2020 after Kenny Atkinson was fired just before the season was suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He led the Nets to a 7-3 record and into the playoffs in the restart ‘bubble’ at Walt Disney World, but the Nets then opted to give the head coaching job to Nash, despite having no experience. Vaughn stayed on as an ᴀssistant.

Mikal Bridges is averaging 21.7 points a game, but the Nets rank 19th in offensive efficiency

It wasn’t long before he got another chance to run the team after Nash was fired during a turbulent start to the 2022-23 season. The Nets got as high as second in the East before Durant was injured and the Nets gave Vaughn a multiyear contract extension on February 21, 2023, with Marks saying he looked forward to Vaughn leading the team ‘for years to come.’

Not quite one year, it turned out.

Without the sH๏τ-making that Durant and Irving provided, the Nets struggled at times when games were close in fourth quarters. Vaughn also faced a nearly season-long challenge to figure out his best lineup, with Simmons missing 38 games at one point because of a pinched nerve in his lower back and then was forced to miss some games or play limited minutes when he returned.

That meant the Nets played one way on the nights they had Simmons and another way when they didn’t, a problem Bridges pointed to after the loss in Boston. But a night earlier, Vaughn had looked at a team that was getting healthier and still believed a turnaround was possible.

‘I’m just going to be simple and thankful that we’re getting guys back and hopefully we’ll get to a position where we are whole and we come out of the break ready to make a push,’ Vaughn said.

Vaughn is 129-226 as an NBA coach, having gone 58-158 in his first opportunity with Orlando.