3. Mark Jackson
We get it: Mark Jackson‘s name continuously appears on these kinds of lists, and it’s exhausting at this point. Still, M-Jax actually has ties to the Nets, even if they’re not as strong as his New York Knicks connections.
For starters, Jackson was born and raised in Brooklyn. Though he played for the Knicks and has been frequently mentioned as a candidate for that head coaching vacancy, his preaching, rah-rah coaching style may be exactly what Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant want. If Atkinson’s straight-forward, tactical approach wasn’t for them, isn’t it possible they’d rather just have a player’s coach?
Some players felt that Kenny Atkinson had lost some of the locker room recently, which is fairly common when teams struggle. This may ultimately be inconsequential but you probably won’t find a bigger Mark Jackson fan than Rich Kleiman, Kevin Durant’s business partner/manager.
— Ian Begley (@IanBegley) March 7, 2020
Durant’s manager, Rich Kleiman, lobbied for Jackson to get the open Knicks job, and will likely do the same with the Nets. Jackson has served as the coach of the Golden State Warriors rebuild, and even though they needed Steve Kerr to unlock their all-time greatness, Jackson got them on the right path and took them to the playoffs for the first time in ages.
His relationship with the two team’s stars and his connection to Brooklyn means we can’t leave him off the list, even if, objectively, going from Kenny Atkinson to Mark Jackson would be a disastrous, Knicks-esque downgrade on the personnel front.