Jacque Vaughn's Time at the Brooklyn Nets Has Ended

As both a player and a coach, Jacque Vaughn’s ties to the Brooklyn Nets go deep. During his career, he spent two seasons with the Nets prior to their move across two rivers to Brooklyn. He joined the team’s coaching staff in 2016, working as an assistant and interim coach before taking over the head coaching position full-time in November 2022. Now, his time as head of the team has come to an end; The Athletic reports that the Nets fired Vaughn on Monday.

The news comes just under a year after Vaughn and the Nets agreed to a contract extension that would keep him with the team for several more years.

In a post on social media, the Nets announced that “[a]n interim head coach will be named in the near future.”

At The Athletic, Mark Puleo and Mike Vorkunov noted that the firing was unexpected, despite the Nets’ relatively low position in the standings, with a 21-33 record. They cite “league sources” in saying that Vaughn was no longer as popular with the team as he once was. In the wake of Vaughn’s firing, Shams Charania also reported that several Nets players — including Mikal Bridges — had criticized Vaughn’s handling of the team’s offense.

Brooklyn Nets Call Back to New Jersey Roots With 2020-21 Throwback Uniforms

The jerseys harken back to the 1990-91 season for the Nets

What’s next for Brooklyn? The coming weeks and months could find the organization in a position they haven’t been in since, well, around the time Vaughn began his stint there. Writing on Twitter, the New York Post‘s Brian Lewis observed that “[t]his could be Brooklyn’s first in-depth coaching search since Kenny Atkinson in 2016.” For an organization that’s had no small amount of drama in recent years, how the Nets’ front office handles this could speak volumes.