After fairly widespread criticism of the firing of Frank Vogel, the Indiana Pacers have gone and confused those who weren’t already, promoting Nate McMillan to head coach.
The former Seattle and Portland mentor has 12 seasons to his name as a head coach in the NBA, making the playoffs five times and going as far as the Conference Semi-Finals on one occasion.
Unfortunately for Indiana fans, the biggest knock on McMillans’ resume is his inability to consistently improve his team.
Of his 12 seasons as head coach, he has improved his teams’ record only five times, and never in consecutive years has he improved a playoffs result (i.e. first round to Semi-Finals, Semi-Finals to Conference Finals).
However, where he does pick up points is his national team service. There is no basketball team in the world better than that of the US mens’ national team, and McMillan has served as an assistant on that team under Mike Krzyzewski in two Olympics – an impressive achievement.
Still, it’s hard to look past his fairly ordinary NBA assignments, and whilst he will get to work with his most potent team yet with the Pacers, where or not he will provide better guidance than Vogel remains to be seen.
Grade: C