Former Pacers assistant coach Popeye Jones wins NBA Championship with Denver Nuggets
Former Indiana Pacers assistant coach Popeye Jones is an NBA Champion.
Jones, 53, was on the sidelines for the Pacers from 2013 through 2020. He was an assistant under both Frank Vogel and Nate McMillan with the blue and gold, and Jones was a part of the staff that reached the 2014 Eastern Conference Finals.
A former player himself, Jones was well respected with the Pacers. He stayed with the team through two different eras of the roster, yet both groups found success. He played a part in that.
In 2020, he joined the Philadelphia 76ers bench for one season under Doc Rivers before becoming an assistant with the Denver Nuggets the following year. He has been with the Nuggets and head coach Michael Malone since.
That's where Jones became a champion, as Denver earned the Larry O'Brien Trophy earlier this week. Jones also played for the Nuggets in the 1999-00 season.
The former Pacers assistant shared a moment with Finals MVP Nikola Jokic on the television broadcast of the Finals right after the game.
The Pacers had a winning record in all but one season that Jones was on staff, and Paul George was injured for most of that campaign. It was one of the more successful stretches in the history of the franchise in terms of regular season play.
No former Pacers players won a title this year, though Victor Oladipo, who overlapped with Jones for a few years, reached the Finals with the Miami Heat. An injury kept him off the court.
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