The Oklahoma City Thunder are the last NBA team to have a vacancy at head coach, but that doesn’t mean that the team isn’t thinking about what its staff will look like once it does find a successor for Billy Donovan.
According to well-respected college basketball journalist Andrew Slater, former Wake Forest head men’s basketball coach and NBA veteran Danny Manning is being pursued by three NBA teams for a spot on their benches — the Pacers, Pelicans and, yes, the Thunder.
The news come as a bit of a surprise considering the fact that the Thunder still don’t have a head coach and that head coaches normally pick their own staffs, however, it has become commonplace in the NBA for front offices to make “recommendations” to their head coaches on assistants.
At this point, it seems fair to assume that either San Antonio’s Will Hardy or longtime Thunder assistant Brian Keefe will end up with the head coaching job, and in either case, Manning’s experience both as a pro player and collegiate head coach could come in handy.
Indiana, New Orleans & OKC among those, um, per source https://t.co/dSG6gxMyr3
— Andrew Slater (@Andrew__Slater) October 30, 2020
With the 2020 NBA Draft right around the corner, there’s no indication that Sam Presti is in any sort of rush to hire a head coach, but if the NBA season is to begin in the near future — it seems that mid-January is the latest that will happen — the team will have to fill the position sooner rather than later.