Tag: Kevin Ollie

Nets’ Kevin Ollie speaks on Jalen Wilson’s multi-year contract

Prior to Saturday’s matchup against the Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets interim head coach Kevin Ollie spoke on Jalen Wilson’s multi-year deal.

NEW YORK — The Brooklyn Nets have had a tough past few months as they went from a team looking to overcome the odds to a franchise who may be as expected. However, one of the great stories that came out of this season was the fact that 2023 second-round pick Jalen Wilson had his Two-Way deal converted into a multi-year contract on Friday.

“Just stability, just a constant professional, get in a gym early, leave late, all those different things that everybody says, but they’re true,” Nets interim head coach Kevin Ollie said of Wilson prior to Saturday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks. While Brooklyn confirmed that they signed Wilson to a multi-year contract while not publicizing the exact terms of the agreement, Michael Scotto of HoopsHype reported that the deal is for three seasons.

Scotto also reported that Wilson’s contract for the rest of this season is guaranteed while the 2024-25 season is partially guaranteed and the 2025-26 season is a team option. Wilson has been getting regular minutes in the rotation in February after showing what he could do for Brooklyn right away with his three-point shooting and hustle plays.

“Just always in the lab,” Ollie continued. “Working on his game, perfecting his game, open to coaching, just a great role model. And yeah, he’s young, but he’s a leader. And, we see those qualities in him. We see the leadership in him. And, he’s just going to continue to develop because he’s open for learning. And he’s eager for learning.”

Wilson was the 51st overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft after spending four years at the University of Kansas where he went a national title and was a consensus All-American. He’s averaging 5.0 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 1.1 assists per game while shooting 46.8% from the field and 43.3% from three-point range in 21 appearances.

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Nets’ Dennis Schröder gives credit to Kevin Ollie for instilling confidence

After Thursday’s win, Brooklyn Nets guard Dennis Schröder gave interim head coach Kevin Ollie credit for building the team’s confidence.

NEW YORK — The Brooklyn Nets are 2-3 in the era of interim head coach Kevin Ollie and while it didn’t look good in the beginning, Brooklyn seems to be turning the corner. The Nets have a tough task of trying to play its way into the play-in tournament, but Dennis Schröder feels the team is getting confidence from Ollie.

“I mean, coach is doing a great job just giving people confidence, letting people play,” Schröder said of Ollie after Thursday’s 124-97 win over the Atlanta Hawks. Schröder had a near triple-double of 23 points, eight rebounds, and seven assists in the first of two games against an Atlanta team that has the 10th and final seed in the Eastern Conference play-in tournament.

“He understands the game,” Schröder explained. Schröder not only gave praise to his head coach, but to his teammates as well after a decisive victory. “He’s been around for 12, 13 years in the league himself. And then, my teammates, they make it easy as well, you know? The transition was easier for me,” Schröder said.

After being acquired from the Toronto Raptors at the trade deadline, Schröder has been having some solid performances while trying to learn the offensive and defensive schemes along with his coaches and his teammates. Through eight games, Schröder is averaging 12.1 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 4.3 assists while shooting 42.7% from the field and 50.0% from three-point land.

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Nets’ Kevin Ollie stresses lack of defense in blowout loss at Raptors

After Thursday’s 121-93 loss at the Toronto Raptors, Brooklyn Nets interim head coach Kevin Ollie addressed the lack of defense.

The Brooklyn Nets are moving forward with the rest of their season hoping to turn things around enough to be able to make it into the Eastern Conference play-in tournament. Brooklyn’s decision-makers decided that Jacque Vaughn was no longer suited to help the franchise achieve that goal so Kevin Ollie is now the interim head coach with his work cut out for him.

The Nets began their playoff push after the All-Star break by visiting the Toronto Raptors on Thursday on the back of a new coach calling the shots and hopefully, renewed hope. However, Thursday’s game at the Raptors seemingly reminded everyone who have watched the Nets this season that some big problems still remain.

Brooklyn lost at Toronto 121-93 despite the fact that the Raptors have a worse record than the Nets and Toronto was only favored by one to two points before the game tipped off. After a few minutes passed by, it became clear that Brooklyn still has work to do in terms of implementing the new tweaks in their overall gameplan.

Two of the main issues that prevented the Nets from being competitive against the Raptors was the lack of transition defense, along with a lack of overall defense, and the lack of presence in the rebounding aspect of the game. After the disappointing loss, Ollie addressed the defensive part of their gameplan that was sorely lacking:

“We started off with the third quarter executing, playing good defense, getting out on the break, making some shots and when our shots don’t go in, we can’t stop playing defense. I think that was a transition point for them (the Raptors), getting out in transition, so we got to make sure that we understand that we got to get stops. If the ball’s not going in, we got to get back and you know coral, show bodies, but they were just getting layups and we can’t have that happen.”

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Kevin Ollie’s debut as Nets interim head coach goes horribly wrong

In Kevin Ollie’s first game as Brooklyn Nets interim head coach, the Nets disappointed as they lost at the Toronto Raptors 121-93.

The Brooklyn Nets came out of the All-Star break as the most news-worthy team in the NBA due to them firing Jacque Vaughn and hiring Kevin Ollie to be his successor. Vaughn received a lot of criticism for how the team went 8-24 after a 13-10 start to this season and he paid the price in the end.

After Ollie was named the interim head coach on Monday, he had two days to hold practice as the leader of the team and try to install his vision within the team. The first glimpse at what the product could look like moving forward came in Thursday’s 121-93 loss at the Toronto Raptors.

While Ollie had just 28 games to show the Nets’ organization what he could do as the head man, Thursday showed that he and the team will need more time to learn each other. Brooklyn was competitive for the first 30 minutes of the game, but the bottom fell out for the Nets starting with the last few minutes of the third quarter.

Thursday showed how far the team has to go as it was clear that the players are still learning how to execute the new wrinkles within the offensive and defensive scheme installed by Ollie. At this point, everyone who follows the Nets will have to be patient with the team for the next few games to see if the players can respond differently to Ollie than they did to Vaughn.

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Nets’ Kevin Ollie discusses expectations for the team moving forward

Brooklyn Nets interim head coach Kevin Ollie spoke to the media after practice on Wednesday and laid out his expectations for the team.

The Brooklyn Nets have entered a new chapter as they have promoted Kevin Ollie to interim head coach after Jacque Vaughn was fired on Monday. Ollie will get the remaining 28 games of this season to show the organization what he can do and give himself the best chance of becoming the permanent head coach after this season.

Vaughn was fired after the team went 8-23 heading into the All-Star break following a 13-10 start. With the franchise trying to turn their season around enough to make the play-in tournament, something had to happen and general manager Sean Marks and owner Joe Tsai decided that a change in coaching was in order.

Ollie takes over a Nets team that has been in a prolonged slump due to various factors such as Ben Simmons being unavailable or other players having issues with the offensive structure under Vaughn. Ollie will be tasked with bringing a change in pace in the hopes that Brooklyn gets back to being competitive and hard-working in every contest, similar to how they were in the beginning of this season.

Recently, the Nets have looked lifeless at times on the floor and while it was thought to be just Spencer Dinwiddie who was showing his displeasure on the floor, Brooklyn lost to the Boston Celtics 136-86 on Feb. 14, a sign that players have stopped competing.

After that loss, there was speculation of Vaughn either being fired or being on the hot seat given how embarrassing the loss was. The hope is that with Ollie at the helm, the Nets will not have a game nearly that bad for the rest of this season unless there are unforeseen circumstances such as injuries.

After being named the interim head coach on Monday, Ollie has been able to have two practices with his players before going to Toronto to face the Raptors on Thursday. Ollie met with the media after practice on Wednesday and spoke on what the expectations of his players will be now that he’s in charge:

“We got a couple things on defense that we’re changing on our pick-and-rolls and a couple things on the offensive things that we doing. Add a little bit more spacing, but the biggest thing is playing for each other and making the right plays. Not being selfish, getting the ball to the guys that we need to get the ball to in their right spots where they can be very successful. Playing the right way and we need to do that more consistently so that’s not a scheme change or anything, that’s just playing better basketball. Doing simple better.”

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Report: Nets name Kevin Ollie as interim head coach

According to various reports on Monday, the Brooklyn Nets have hired Kevin Ollie to be the interim head coach to replace Jacque Vaughn.

The Brooklyn Nets still have the mindset of turning around their season in time to get back into the Eastern Conference playoff picture with 28 games left. After firing Jacque Vaughn on Monday, the Nets have quickly pivoted to someone who’s already on the coaching staff to be the interim head coach.

Per Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, Brooklyn is naming Kevin Ollie their interim head coach. After Vaughn was fired on Monday following a season in which the Nets began with a 13-10 record only to go 8-23 heading into the All-Star break, Brooklyn has found their replacement for Vaughn with minimal time lost.

After Vaughn’s firing, the Nets announced that they would be searching for an interim coach to appoint in the near future, but with Brooklyn resuming its season on Thursday at the Toronto Raptors, it made sense to find the interim coach as soon as possible. Ollie was hired by the Nets heading into this season to be a part of Vaughn’s coaching staff.

Ollie, 51, played in the NBA from 1995 to 2010 before transitioning into coaching, beginning his coaching career as an assistant coach for the University of Connecticut. Ollie became the head coach of the Huskies in 2012 and remained in that role until 2018 when he was fired from the university after the NCAA began an investigation into the program.

After going through almost four years of litigation against the University of Connecticut over whether he was fired with just cause, he eventually won his case against the school and was given back pay. Ollie has experience with Overtime Elite as he was hired by the league to be the head of coaching and player development.

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Ranking the 21 players who have played for the most (at least 10!) NBA teams

Ish Smith has now suited up for nearly half the teams in the league. Who else comes close?

There is something special about a journeyman who has experience playing for various different franchises during their NBA careers.

As of the time of publishing this article, there are 21 players who played at least one game for at least 10 different teams around the league. While many are former undrafted free agents who scrapped and clawed their way around to stay pros, others were former top picks.

Joe Smith (No. 1 overall pick in 1995), Jim Jackson (No. 4 pick in 1992), Jeff Green (No. 5 pick in 2007) and D.J. Augustin (No. 9 pick in 2008) were lottery picks before bouncing around from team to team.

One reason for this is that you have to be pretty good to convince so many teams that you are worth an NBA contract.

So we took a look at the players who have played for the most teams while in the NBA. Feel free to use this as a resource next time you are having trouble guessing a player for Immaculate Grid.

Note that some active players who could potentially make this list in the future if they keep signing with new teams in the NBA include Justin Holiday, Robin Lopez, Jae Crowder, Seth Curry, George Hill, JaVale McGee, Markieff Morris and Noah Vonleh.

The pie charts provided below indicate how many games each player played with each team so you can track longevity.

All data is available via Basketball-Reference and NBA.com.

Former Sixers guard Kevin Ollie lands a job on Nets’ coaching staff

Former Philadelphia 76ers guard Kevin Ollie joins the Brooklyn Nets’ coaching staff.

With the offseason in full swing for many teams around the league, it’s time to begin fortifying rosters and coaching staffs to prepare for the 2023-24 season.

The Brooklyn Nets are rebuilding after trading Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving during the 2022-23 season. They recovered to make the playoffs, but were swept by the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round.

On Saturday, the Nets added former Sixers guard Kevin Ollie to coach Jacque Vaughn’s staff. Ollie was a finalist for the head coach’s position with the Detroit Pistons before they hired Monty Williams.

The 6-foot-4 guard from UConn played 280 games across six seasons for the Sixers, and he averaged 2.7 points and 1.6 assists. Ollie was a bench piece on the 2001 Sixers team that reached the finals. He played for 11 teams in his NBA career.

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Brooklyn Nets hire Kevin Ollie as assistant coach

The Brooklyn Nets are hiring Kevin Ollie as an assistant coach, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Now that the Brooklyn Nets are in their offseason, there are a lot of matters that are being addressed such as head coach Jacque Vaughn’s coaching staff. As reported on Saturday by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Nets are hiring Overtime Elite head coach Kevin Ollie to be an assistant coach for the organization.

Ollie, 50, has been a coach in some capacity since his NBA playing career ended with the 2009-10 campaign that he spent with the Oklahoma City Thunder. After that, he became an assistant coach for his alma mater, the University of Connecticut, before being promoted to head coach of the team in 2012.

During his time at UConn, Ollie led the school to a 127-79 (61.7%) record including the 2014 National Championship which made him one of four African-American coaches to do so. Ollie was fired from the university in 2018 due to a number of reasons including an NCAA investigation into UConn for how the program was being run.

In 2021, Ollie was hired by Overtime Elite to be the head of coaching and basketball development for the league. It seems that he was thriving in that role which should be good for Brooklyn since they are a team full of promising, young players like Mikal Bridges and Nic Claxton.

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Every player in Philadelphia 76ers history who has worn No. 12

Here is a list of all 30 players who have worn the No. 12 uniform in the history of the Philadelphia 76ers.

It’s summertime in the NBA, so it’s time to learn some history. The Philadelphia 76ers are one of the older franchises in the NBA. Their history dates to the 1949-50 season.

With that longevity, the team has had hundreds of players come through the City of Brotherly Love. Sixers Wire looks at the No. 13, which has been worn by 30 of those players in the history of the franchise.

This running series will go through all of the uniform numbers worn in franchise history. The previous edition of this series was a list compiling the five players who have worn the No. 13.

Here is the list of the 30 who have worn No. 12 in Sixers history: