Report: Thunder may be eyeing Spurs assistant for head coach vacancy

The Thunder have a vacancy on their bench, but a few names have emerged as potential options.

After five years as the head coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Billy Donovan has officially taken his talents to the Windy City of Chicago.

As the Thunder prepare for an offseason that is expected to bring forth a lot of change, aside from potentially trading away some of the team’s veteran players, Sam Presti will also have to find a head coach for his rebuilding club.

Having well-established connections with the San Antonio Spurs, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, Presti may reach back to his San Antonio roots to find his team’s next leader.

The Spurs have long been considered the NBA’s gold standard franchise, with Gregg Popovich’s staff becoming one of the league’s proving ground for future head coaches. Most notably, Mike Budenholzer — a two-time NBA Coach of the Year Award winner — sat next to Popovich on the bench for 17 years before getting his break with the Atlanta Hawks in 2015.

A similar story can be told of Brett Brown, who was Popovich’s assistant for seven years before being hired as head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers in 2013.

According to Windhorst, Will Hardy — who has been an assistant on Popovich’s staff for four years — could wind up assuming the vacancy in Oklahoma City. He was mentioned by Windhorst as one of three candidates whose names have been making the rounds.

“The expectation is this could be a first-time head coach. Some of the names that I’ve heard, David Vanterpool, who’s an assistant with the Timberwolves, Adrian Griffin, who’s been a candidate for jobs over the years, recently with Toronto, and watch out for a sleeper candidate, Willy Hardy, an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs, a lot of people are very high on him, very young, 32 years old.”

Although the commencement of the 2020-21 season is anyone’s guess, most front offices like to have new head coaches installed prior to the draft, as a coach is typically hired because they’re being entrusted to implement a system to maximize the talent on the roster. To that end, it makes sense for them to have some level on input with respect to which players to retain and what kind of player to go after.

Obviously, a team that is entering a rebuild wouldn’t necessarily have that same mindset, so making a quick hire, for the Thunder, might not be a priority.

Still, once a prospective coach’s name begins making the rounds, they typically get interviews and could wind up off the market, so if the Thunder are truly interested in Hardy, it may behoove the team to attempt to get him in for an interview sooner rather than later.