The Brooklyn Nets will try to move on from their forgettable season by hiring Kenny Atkinson from the Atlanta Hawks.
The 2015-16 Brooklyn Nets had one of the most disastrous campaigns in NBA history. What made their 21-61 record even worse is that they don’t even own their first-round pick for the upcoming draft, meaning they may have just gifted the Boston Celtics, a young playoff team that’s got a superstar coach, this year’s best prospect in Ben Simmons. In between all of that, they went through two coaches, two GMs, and parted ways with Deron Williams and Joe Johnson.
Fortunately, things may be looking up for the Nets as they turned to the Atlanta Hawks organization for a permanent head coach. Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting that assistant Kenny Atkinson, who was going to be highly sought after this offseason, put pen to paper on a multi-year deal with the Nets:
The report was later mace official by the Nets.
Atkinson is coming from a great system in Atlanta, where head coach Mike Budenholzer is just one year removed from a Coach of the Year title. It was always going to be hard for the Hawks to replicate last year’s success with DeMarre Carroll gone, but they still got back into the playoffs while the decision to keep Paul Millsap has paid massive dividends.
It’s unclear how quickly Atkinson will be able to turn things around in Brooklyn. Their roster still has a lot of holes, and he’s not exactly a miracle worker. But at least this is a step in the right direction for the Nets, as this decision is far greater than if they had made the choice to hire Byron Scott.
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