A decade after leading his alma mater to a national championship, Kevin Ollie is getting a shot in the NBA with the Nets as their interim head coach.
Ollie is replacing Jacque Vaughn, fired on Monday morning as the skidding Nets were showing no signs of improvement, ESPN reported.
The 51-year-old Ollie played 13 seasons in the NBA and coached Connecticut to the 2014 national championship.
But the Huskies struggled after that, failing to make the NCAA Tournament in 2016 and 2017 before his dismissal.
Ollie later coached with Overtime Elite, the new high school league that pays players, before joining the Nets as an assistant this year.
Ollie is relatively inexperienced at the professional level as a coach.
Before taking over at Connecticut, he was an assistant at the school under Jim Calhoun.
Ollie was a candidate for the Pistons’ head-coaching job last summer before the team hired Monty Williams.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]