"This Was My Decision" Kevin Pritchard Talks About The Pacers Firing Nate Bjorkgren
On Wednesday afternoon President of Basketball Operations for the Indiana Pacers Kevin Pritchard made an opening statement about firing first-year head coach Nate Bjorkgren, and then answered questions for over 20 minutes from reporters.
"As you guys have already seen we've let Nate go," Pritchard said in his opening statement. "I would say this was a really tough decision, one that had a lot of thought behind it, a lot of deliberation."
The Pacers now go into a head coaching search for the second consecutive season (they fired Nat McMillan last season).
Pritchard discussed how they handled their hiring process last season.
"We really did an exhaustive search," Pritchard said. "I know people sort of speculated it was made off the cuff, I would guess on each candidate, we probably had 15 or 18 candidates, we probably had 50 pages of notes, it was almost too much to be honest with you."
The Pacers have a good roster with players such as All-Star Domantas Sabonis, Malcolm Brogdon, Caris LeVert, T.J. Warren and Myles Turner.
"I don't know if will roll it back and take three-years and draft," Pritchard said. "I think we're in a mode of let's try and be as competitive as we can right now."
Pritchard said that he consults ownership on a daily basis, but the decision to fire Bjorkgren was his.
"Of course I consult Herbie and Stevie, we do that on a daily basis, but this was my decision," Pritchard said.
Pritchard was also asked about the potential of hiring Terry Stotts who coached the Portland Trail Blazers for the last nine years, and graduated from high school in Bloomington, Indiana (Chris Haynes of Yahoo! also reported interest in a Tweet below).
"I just let a coach go today," Pritchard said. "I want to fully respect that before I even dig into the potential candidates."
