When Jacque Vaughn was on the tail finish of his NBA profession as a backup level guard for the San Antonio Spurs, Mike Budenholzer was an assistant on Gregg Popovich’s employees.
Budenholzer, now an NBA championship-winning head coach for the Milwaukee Bucks, remembers Vaughn vividly.
“As a player, his work ethic and his attention to detail was just off the charts,” he stated on Friday. “He’s about as sharp as anyone I’ve ever been round as a participant, and his thirst for sport plans and little moments the place he could make a distinction and affect profitable, it was high-level.
“And as a coach, it’s kind of the same thing.”
Vaughn was not the candidate the basketball world noticed coming.
He amassed only a 58-158 report as a first-time head coach with the Orlando Magic. The Nets had handed on Vaughn after firing Kenny Atkinson, hiring Steve Nash regardless of Vaughn’s success within the Orlando Bubble. They had been set to miss him a second time after dismissing Nash seven video games into the season.
Vaughn, himself, even joked he was the “write-in candidate” after the Nets selected to not rent Ime Udoka.
“But I’m OK with that,” Vaughn stated. “I said to my wife, I might have not been her first choice and we’ve been together 20 years, so you know, it could all work out. So off we go.”
And off the Nets have gone.
The Nets are a league-best 20-7 since Vaughn changed Nash. They enter Christmas on an eight-game profitable streak coming off a signature victory over Budenholzer’s No. 1 seeded Bucks on Friday.
They are actually the scariest workforce in all of basketball — as a result of they’re profitable at a excessive price and haven’t but totally put the items collectively.
Kevin Durant’s manufacturing (and his career-high taking pictures effectivity) has been the one fixed.
Save for Royce O’Neale and Nic Claxton, necessary position gamers have all missed time as a result of harm, plus Kyrie Irving served an eight-game suspension because of a controversial social media put up. Not to say the various iterations of Ben Simmons, who is important to the Nets’ success however continues to work again into type after offseason again surgical procedure.
Under Vaughn, the Nets are proving they don’t seem to be simply the names on the again of their jerseys. They have lastly develop into a cohesive workforce. Just when everybody started counting them out, Vaughn flipped the script.
“Jacque’s made it very clear,” Irving stated. “If you’re not playing hard enough, he’s gonna let you know about it.”
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Irving’s preliminary response was to “call cap.”
About a month earlier than Friday’s matchup in opposition to the Bucks, Vaughn gave his gamers a actuality verify.
The Nets are one of many smallest groups in basketball. It permits them to play quick and change screens on protection, but it surely leaves the workforce vulnerable to getting drilled on the glass.
So Vaughn used a apply day to name his gamers out. Securing a rebound begins with boxing out an opposing participant, and the Nets simply weren’t doing that sufficient.
Vaughn pulled every participant’s particular person box-out price. Irving, for instance, ranked second-to-last on the workforce.
“Who’s making these stats?” he jokingly recalled in an preliminary response. “You want to talk about holding people accountable?”
It went down the road.
Simmons, listed at 6-10, 240 kilos, declined to share his box-out price however stated “it wasn’t great.”
“It’s right in front of your eyes, it’s not a made-up thing,” Simmons stated. “It’s a real stat.”
Claxton, the beginning middle, ranked within the workforce’s high percentile however stated Vaughn’s message hit dwelling for the gamers who had been on the decrease finish of the spectrum.
Durant agreed.
“A lot of guys didn’t like where they were,” he stated. “I think since then we’ve been making a conscious effort.”
The proof is within the pudding: from the start of the season via Nov. 25, the Nets gave up the fourth-most offensive rebounds per sport. Since that time, getting into Christmas, the Nets permit the fifth-fewest. They haven’t made any roster modifications.
As for Irving, he’s averaging 6.6 rebounds within the month of December alone, up from 4.1 via Dec. 1.
“When I’m able to hold myself accountable and Jacque’s able to hold me accountable and my teammates are able to hold me accountable, then it makes it easier for us to hold each other accountable by doing the little things,” he stated. “These are things that we have to do every night to win.”
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Timeout, Jacque Vaughn.
It occurs instantly after a blunder on protection — or generally a damaged offensive play on a key possession.
One of the extra evident variations between Vaughn and Nash is the usage of timeouts. Where Nash uncared for to name a timeout, Vaughn nips a foul play within the bud instantly.
It occurred minutes into the Nets’ blowout victory over the shorthanded Golden State Warriors on Wednesday. Draymond Green drove down the lane and the Nets shifted over to assist, leaving Kevon Looney wide-open for a dump-off cross and a straightforward, uncontested dunk.
Vaughn had seen sufficient. The rating was solely 8-4, however he wished to present his workforce a wake-up name. They got here out after the timeout and completed the primary quarter up, 46-17.
“We understand we made a mistake,” Durant stated. “It’s always beneficial for us. So I love when he does that. It just keeps us on point.”
Vaughn likes to make use of a line he obtained from his coach at Kansas, Roy Williams: “The old eye in the sky don’t lie.”
It’s why he often makes use of the iPad to name out defensive miscues throughout timeouts. The pill brings the workforce collectively and creates productive dialogue for a way they’ll make changes on the fly.
“We didn’t have that previously,” stated Vaughn. “So that communication part, whether it was a clip guys wanted to see at halftime that we talked through, I think that’s where the trust is growing: to be able to communicate, to be able to ask questions, have a little psychological safety where you can ask and not be reprimanded and we try to figure this thing out together.”
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It’s Dec. 15, one in every of few respectable apply days in a wocky Nets season that has seen conventional sport day shootarounds scrapped in favor of standard pregame walkthroughs. The workforce has clearly taken to their new coach. They have rallied round him in a means that makes him an unquestioned early season Coach of the Year candidate.
Vaughn says he owes “a lot of people” for his teaching fashion. He cited the late Jerry Sloan, who he performed for on a perennial contending Utah Jazz workforce alongside Karl Malone and John Stockton.
Vaughn realized from Popovich, one of many best basketball coaches within the historical past of the game. He realized enjoying for Doc Rivers, Terry Stotts, Lawrence Frank and Williams.
Vaughn’s imaginative and prescient for the Nets was by no means solely tethered to Durant, Irving or Simmons, although the three play integral roles on how deep of a playoff run this workforce could make.
Vaughn’s imaginative and prescient for Brooklyn was all the time about holding everybody accountable from Seven (Durant) and Eleven (Irving) to the 14th and fifteenth gamers on the bench. It’s why the one win extra important than Friday’s victory over the Bucks was their 136-133 win over the Indiana Pacers on Dec. 10.
Entering that evening, Durant ranked No. 1 in whole minutes and O’Neale ranked second. Vaughn rested each key rotation participant besides Yuta Watanabe and Edmond Sumner. Behind 33 factors off the bench from Cam Thomas, the Nets’ second and third unit stole a victory from a rolling Pacers workforce on the highway in Indiana.
“[The vision] was based on no excuses,” Vaughn stated. “And so whoever is going to be out there on the floor will be able to adapt as long as you’re playing hard.”
It took the unlikely, write-in candidate for the Nets to seek out their identification on each ends of the ground.
The Nets are going to maneuver the ball. They are going to compete on protection. They are going to field out as a result of Vaughn calls for it of them.
Above all, the Nets are going to win video games as a result of they aren’t relying solely on the names on the again of their jerseys. They are counting on one another, and Vaughn has been the catalyst.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com
