How Gregg Popovich Helped Jacque Vaughn Discover His Next Chapter
When you take a deep look across the NBA head coaching landscape, Gregg Popovich's fingerprints are imprinted everywhere. Many of his former assistant coaches have become head coaches and other coaches around the league have been strongly influenced by the 27-year NBA mastermind.
The newest head coach of Popovich's coaching tree in the league is Jacque Vaughn. The two hold a special relationship.
The Brooklyn Nets head coach was at the tail end of his playing 12-year playing career in the NBA. In his final three seasons as a player, he played under the 73-year-old head coach in San Antonio. He appeared in 64 games for the Spurs during their NBA Championship run in the 2006-07 season. Two seasons later, Vaughn was 33 at the time of his last season (2008-09) with the Spurs.
In the back of his mind, he knew father time was catching up to him. He prided himself on 'being the most well-conditioned dude' on the roster; something Vaughn honestly acknowledged wasn't maintainable at that time. He was also balancing raising his young kids.
“I was winding down my career. There was a chance for me to continue to play. I had young kids and the offseason was a little harder to work than it always had been. Prided myself on being the most well-conditioned dude on the team and I was open and honest with him saying I’m not sure I’m capable of doing that anymore."
After his final season, Vaughn stepped away from the game to take a gap year. That year off was the beginning stage of the next chapter of his life, and Popovich was present from afar.
"I’m going to take the year off with my family and see if I want to continue to play or transition to doing something else," the Nets head coach said describing his bye year. "He [Popovich] said you can always come and shadow, follow, be around us and figure it out along the way. And that’s kind of how it started.”
Vaughn returned to the Spurs organization following the gap year and became an assistant under Popovich for two years (2010-12). For Popovich, who holds the all-time record for most NBA wins by a head coach, Vaughn's intangibles and immense knowledge of the game always stood out to him. Those tools, combined with the 47-year-old's role player perspective and experience, are the perfect mixture to produce an NBA head coach.
"As far as what I saw in him, he’s just one of those guys who is a natural, high basketball IQ guy who knows what's going on," said Popovich on Vaughn. "He wasn’t the most talented player in the world. Usually, those guys have to figure out how they're going to make a career for themselves and what they're going to do to become important to a team.
"What is important to a team is what makes you a valuable teammate. You can see that a lot of guys that you're coaching now, and he's one of those. He intrinsically understood what was going on in time spaces, clock, scores, engender the respect of his teammates because the way he planned the example he set up all sorts of things.”
Before Vaughn had his short-term interim tag removed, he held only one full-time head coaching position in the league. He was the head coach of the Orlando Magic for two and a half seasons before being relieved of his duties. He compiled a 58-158 overall record for the rebuilding Magic. After the tough hit, he, once again, returned to San Antonio. He spent the 2015-16 season working as a scout.
Following the brief one-year tenure as a scout, he headed to the East Coast to join the Nets as an assistant on ex. head coach Kenny Atkinson's staff in 2016. After Atkinson was relieved of his head coaching duties, he served as the interim head coach for a 10-game period (7-3) during the 2019-20 season.
Unfortunately for Vaughn, he was passed up again in Brooklyn's head coaching search. This time, it was for Steve Nash, who was named the Nets' head coach in September of 2020. Before remaining in Brooklyn as one of the highest-paid lead assistant coaches, Vaughn interviewed for handfuls of other head coaching vacancies.
Only seven games into the 2022-23 season, Vaughn was back in the head coaching chair after the franchise mutually parted ways with Nash. It only took four games (2-2) for Nets' General Manager Sean Marks to finally give the 47-year-old the chance he was waiting patiently for: to become a full-time NBA coach again.
“I did," said Popovich on talking with Vaughn after he was named the full-time Nets head coach. "He's a good friend. We spent a lot of time together. Obviously, it's worked out. The thing about Jacque is he doesn't want the camera and he's not going to seek attention.
"He's a quiet dude. He's very contemplative. He thinks things through and he'll have a sort of a piece that engenders respect. He doesn't do anything unnecessarily. He’ll have standards, he’ll hold them accountable. He knows he knows what he's doing. So I think with the experiences he's had taken over now, it's really a position. I’m not sure about the beard though.”
Since taking over as head coach, Vaughn has helped lead a massive turnaround, amassing a 23-7 overall record (21-5 since the 'acting head coach' tag was removed). In fact, he holds the best 30-game start by a Nets head coach, per Elias.
To make things even sweeter, he is the first head coach to lead a team on a 10+ game win streak and appear in every game of a 10-game win streak as a player for the same franchise since Danny Ainge accomplished the feat with the Phoenix Suns in 1998. Vaughn, who has the Nets riding the second-best winning streak in franchise history (12 games) was a player during the franchise-record-tying win streak (14 games) during the 2005-06 season.
"I'm in this position because of him," said Vaughn on Popovich's influence on himself. "He saw something in me as a player, saw something in me when I was done playing, to have me a part of that organization, to share an office with him to see how he prepared for regular season games, for playoff games, for shootarounds.
"To see how he cared for my family, to see how he is still a mentor to me – I can call and talk to him about my kids, my wife, my job, all of the above. So a very important person in my life, and I wouldn't be here without him."
After leading Brooklyn to a wire-to-wire victory over San Antonio on Monday night, the two head coaches held a long embrace. To Vaughn, it was an embrace with a close friend 'that has meant the world' to him.
“It’s always special, tough to coach against him. Just because of the respect that I have for him. Tough words. I love him," said Vaughn on the postgame exchange and on Popovich. "He has meant the world to me, and still does.
"I know how important he is to so many people around the league. Families have been changed. My family’s been changed because of him. My kids were able to grow up differently because of him. I’ll never forget that. He is an unbelievably caring person. You don’t get to see that part of him all the time in the media. The hug is genuine. The words are genuine. So a really, really special person in my life.”
