NEW YORK — A familiar face has joined Jacque Vaughn’s coaching staff in Brooklyn.
Former UConn Huskies head coach Kevin Ollie was added to the Nets’ staff as an assistant coach, the team announced in a statement on Tuesday. Will Weaver, Jay Hernandez and Ronnie Burrell round out Vaughn’s coaching staff, and Corey Vinson joins Adam Capcorn’s player development staff.
Ollie is a 13-year NBA veteran who played point guard for a number of teams, most notably a six-season stint with the Philadelphia 76ers with additional pit stops in New Jersey, Cleveland, Seattle/Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, Chicago, Minnesota, Indiana, Orlando, Dallas and Sacramento.
He is best known as the point guard who led the Huskies to an NCAA championship in 1995. He was also head coach of the 2014 UConn men’s basketball team that won the NCAA championship, and was named the American Athletic Conference Coach of the Year in 2016.
Ollie was most recently the head coach at the Atlanta-based Overtime Elite, a professional basketball league for elite prospects aged 16 to 20. No Overtime Elite players have cracked an NBA rotation since the program’s inception in 2021, but two highly touted prospects — twins Amen and Ausar Thompson — are projected to go top-10 in the 2023 NBA draft.
Ollie joins Brooklyn’s coaching staff after heavy interest in other head coaching opportunities across the league. He was a finalist for the Detroit Pistons’ head coaching job that ultimately went to former Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams. He was also reportedly in the mix for a spot on Willie Green’s coaching staff with the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Nets job is his first go-round as an NBA assistant coach.
And for a Nets team with as many as 12 first-round picks through 2030 and three young prospects — Nic Claxton, Cam Thomas and Day’Ron Sharpe — Ollie’s penchant for player development could come in handy.
Four of Ollie’s former Huskies players went on to enjoy successful NBA careers: four-time All-Star Kemba Walker, two-time All-Star Andre Drummond, and role players Jeremy Lamb and Shabazz Muhammad.
During a 19-game stint with the New Jersey Nets in the 2000-01 NBA season, Ollie averaged a point, a rebound and an assist. Over his 13-year career, he averaged about four points, two assists and one rebound per game, and his best season came in 2003, when he averaged eight points, four assists and one steal per game after his midseason trade to the Seattle SuperSonics and made the only 3-pointer he attempted with them on the season.
Ollie is expected to be a major player for future NBA head coaching vacancies.
The Huskies fired Ollie in 2018 after an NCAA investigation into his program’s levels of compliance with respect to the rules regarding impermissible contact with prospective student-athletes. In 2022, an arbitrator ruled UConn improperly fired Ollie. It was ordered the university pay Ollie back pay.
