Brooklyn Nets: Jacque Vaughn has earned a head coaching job

The Brooklyn Nets fired head coach Kenny Atkinson out of nowhere in March, replacing him with Jacque Vaughn on an interim basis.

It feels like a lot more than six and a half months ago that the Brooklyn Nets fired head coach Kenny Atkinson, promoting assistant Jacque Vaughn to the top job on an interim basis. Of course, time has taken on a different meaning since then, and anything that happened in early March might as well have been a decade ago.

As far as we know, Vaughn has been the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets for a decade. Or more.

In reality, he coached just two games before the NBA’s season was suspended due to the still-ongoing coronavirus pandemic. They were both wins, including a scintillating 104-102 road victory over the Los Angeles Lakers on the eve of the season’s shutdown.

Vaughn brought his team back into action in the NBA bubble in Orlando, and this team looked nothing like the version we saw back in March. In that final game, Wilson Chandler played 26 minutes, DeAndre Jordan played 27 minutes and Spencer Dinwiddie played 30 minutes all in the starting lineup. Taurean Prince played 27 minutes off the bench.

None of those players joined the team in Orlando.

Instead, when the season restarted, the Brooklyn Nets suited up Tyler Johnson, Lance Thomas, Donta Hall and Jamal Crawford. They signed Michael Beasley, although he was one of the scores of Nets players who ended up testing positive for COVID-19 and was unable to join the team in the NBA bubble.

Vaughn leaned heavily on players who were either not active or not on the roster at all when the season was suspended, and it would have been fair to count the Nets as one of the most overmatched teams in the bubble.

In fact, I did just that, and they proved me wrong.

Don’t underestimate the Brooklyn Nets

The Brooklyn Nets were the surprise of the bubble, going 5-3 in their seeding games and solidifying their seventh seed spot in the Eastern Conference.

They even slayed some giants, although some of the giants in the bubble went out of their way to play at a barely competitive level during seeding games. Still, wins over the Milwaukee Bucks and the LA Clippers belong on your resume, regardless of the specific GAF level of your opponents.

Speaking of resumes, it’s time to start thinking about Jacque Vaughn’s resume going forward. As he’s the head coach of the Nets on an interim basis, nothing is given after this season comes to an end.

The Nets have championship aspirations next season when Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant return from their injuries, so leading a hardscrabble group of misfits to a handful of victories in a pandemic-proof bubble might not be enough to get him the full-time job.

Still, as you see in the tweet above, at least one sportsbook ranks him as the top candidate to be the coach of the Brooklyn Nets in 2020-21.

Maybe the best fit between coach and team isn’t the one between Vaughn and the Nets. Perhaps his best fit is with a young, up and coming team, maybe with the Chicago Bulls in the aftermath of Jim Boylen’s firing.

Regardless of the end destination, Jacque Vaughn has made one thing clear as he’s led his team through the most troubled of times: He deserves to be a head coach in the NBA next season.