Brian Shaw will reportedly get his first crack at a head coaching job. (Sun Sentinel/Getty Images)The Nuggets have reportedly agreed to hire Pacers assistant Brian Shaw as their next head coach.
The Denver Post reports that Shaw will step into the hole vacated when the Nuggets fired former coach George Karl earlier this month. NBA.com has confirmed the report.
Shaw, 47, has never served as a head coach previously but has been linked to a number of coaching positions in recent years, including the Nets and Clippers this summer and the Bobcats and Magic last summer. Previously, he was seen as a possible replacement for Phil Jackson with the Lakers but the job eventually went to Mike Brown. Shaw served as an assistant under Jackson from 2005 to 2011 before moving to Frank Vogel’s bench in Indiana for the 2011-12 season.
“Obviously, I want to be a head coach, but I want my first opportunity to be the right one,” Shaw told Pacers.com last November. “It’s a Catch-22 situation, because every time a team calls and asks for permission to talk to you, if you’ve never been a head coach before, you can’t say no because then people think, Who does he think he is? At the same time I don’t want to keep piling up interviews and then they look and say, Well, he’s interviewed seven different times and doesn’t have a job yet, what’s wrong with him?”
A first-round pick in 1988, Shaw played 14 years with the Celtics, Heat, Magic, Warriors, Sixers, Blazers, and Lakers. He won three titles with the Lakers as a player from 2000 to 2002 and two more as an assistant in 2009 and 2010 under Jackson.
The Denver Post reports that Shaw has no plans to implement Jackson’s famous “Triangle Offense” in Denver.
“Although I played in the triangle and coached the triangle, I also played in a lot of systems, so that’s not something I’m looking to bring to the Nuggets and try to implement,” Shaw said.”I’m going to look at a lot of film of things the team did well, running was one of them. And I’ll continue to build on things they did well and get more of a feel for the personnel and what I think will be conducive to everybody’s ability.”
The hiring marks the end of the heavy lifting for the Nuggets, whose basketball operations department has been overhauled this summer. Karl, voted 2013 Coach of the Year, is out after leading the Nuggets to nine postseason appearances during his nine seasons in Denver, highlighted by a run to the Western Conference finals in 2009. The other eight seasons ended with a first-round exit. Masai Ujiri, voted the 2013 Executive of the Year, is also out, leaving Denver to return to Toronto. In Ujiri’s place, the Nuggets recently hired first-time GM Tim Connelly, previously an assistant GM with the Pelicans. Former Nuggets executive Pete D’Alessandro was also hired by the Kings to serve as GM.
Shaw joins a long list of first-time head coaches hired this summer: former Knicks guard Jason Kidd is now the coach of the Nets, Lakers assistant Steve Clifford is now the coach of the Bobcats, Spurs assistant coach Mike Budenholzer is now the coach of the Hawks, Jazz assistant coach Jeff Hornacek is now the coach of the Suns and Warriors assistant coach Michael Malone is now the coach of the Kings.
The Pacers went 49-32 last season — qualifying for the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference — and were eliminated by the Heat in a tense, seven-game Eastern Conference finals series.
The Nuggets went 57-25 — their best record since joining the NBA — and secured the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference before being upset in the first round of the playoffs by the Warriors.
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