The Nets officially announced that the team officially appointed Jacques Vaughn as the team's head coach, and according to ESPN, multiple sources revealed that Vaughn's new head coach contract with the Nets will expire after the end of the 2023-24 season.
The Vaughan coach came to the Nets from the Magic as early as 2016 to become Atkinson's head assistant, in March 2022, Atkinson left class, Vaughan served as interim head coach, coincidentally, after Nash left class, Vaughan once again served as the Nets' interim head coach, but this time the difference is, "Ye turned positive!" ”
After retiring in 2009, Jacques Vaughn joined the Spurs coach in 2010 as Popovich's assistant coach (not the chief), until three years later, in 2012, Vaughan came out of the Spurs as the head coach of the Magic, very coincidentally, every coach looking up seems to see the "shadow of the Spurs", to be precise, the shadow of Popovich, according to incomplete statistics, the well-known coaches who studied under Popovich are Doug Rivers, Monty Williams, Elvin Gentry, Quinquinquin Snyder, Budden Snyder. Holzer, Jim Boylan, James Borrego, Mike Malone, Steve Cole, Amy Uduka, Will Hardy, Jacques Vaughan, Avery Johnson, Del Negro, Earl Watson, Joe Prati, Del Negro, Lloyd Pierce, Brett Brown, Kokoshkov, Mike Brown, Willie Green, etc.
From the name, we can see a number of current well-known coaches including Cole, Budenholzer, Rivers, Monty, etc., and of course, Uduka and Willie Green, who are eye-catching as soon as they take charge, we can't help but ask, is it Popovich's high success rate? Or is the league already inclined to choose an assistant with Spurs coaching experience as the head coach? Or are these managers who came out of the Spurs value their Spurs resume or Popovich's coaching philosophy?
In July 1988, Larry Brown became NBA San Antonio Spurs coach, and he invited Popovich to be his assistant, and since then, an NBA coaching epoch has appeared. Known as the "NBA West Point Military Academy", the Spurs are known for their high tactical execution and listening to the command, the formation of this style thanks to Popovich's military experience at the United States Air Force Academy when he was young, during the varsity team, Bob Speer and Dean Smith coaches, this coaching combination of "non-stop movement, constant movement, ball can not stop" basketball philosophy, deeply influenced Popovich, in fact, the Spurs team basketball is the refraction of this sentence, in addition, "dealing with people" is also the core of Spurs' thinking, and Popovich ushered in his first beast that needed to be "domesticated" when he first entered the Spurs - David Robinson.
David Robinson has a very high IQ, coupled with a military background, he has not been very obedient to the coach Larry Brown at that time, Popovich, who was an assistant coach at the time, took advantage of the common ground with Robinson to have a similar experience, a little closer to it, so that the admiral can also be a general on the court, Popovich's management philosophy is not like militarized management to turn players into robots, but interspersed in strict and for the sake of players, for the national live broadcast of the game, he also dared to rotate veterans, and David Stern against him. The Spurs' break between playoff series was so short that Popovich would not hesitate to cancel league-mandated media interviews and voluntarily pay fines to keep his players from coming to the arena on their day off, taking up valuable break. It is said that dealing with people is the hardest, but the old man is really using practical actions to impress the players, on the contrary, the players will report to the team with high discipline on the field.
Many people are easy to remember Popovich and Spurs, thinking that this is a factory-like team, but in fact, flexible is tactical and strict is execution, Popovich has never defined his game, on the contrary, he is an extremely flexible coach in tactical arrangements, since 1988, Popovich has often traveled back and forth to Europe to learn European coaches about mobile offense and joint defense. He idolizes Greek coach Zarimi Obradović, one of the few people Popovich has declared to the outside world that he admires, Popovich said: "His game can be described as 'beautiful', the ball is moving, and many of the basic tactics of basketball have been injected with new ideas, such as direct passing, creating open shots, covering without the ball, moving the ball at the first time, etc., they have all been completely renewed." These things give people the true meaning of basketball, which is much more meaningful than one person dribbling through the court and then one-on-one. ”
Popovich once said he didn't like three-pointers when the three-point shot came, because in the troika era, the Spurs were one of the best defensive and the fewest three-point shots in the league, but he was not a paranoid person, and in the post-Leonard era, the Spurs were once one of the teams with the most three-point shots and the most three-point shots in the league, "We don't have a fixed tactical thinking, but we have the only winning mentality." This is Popovich.
In this way, after Popovich's influence on the Spurs for nearly 25 years, the core of the Spurs spirit has long been the transmission of Popovich's spirit, and this core thinking is "team and tactical execution", which can also be glimpsed from its disciples all over the league, and this has become the general tone that sets the team's win.