The Atlanta Hawks have fired their head coach, Nate McMillan, as reported by the journalist from ESPN, Adrian Wojnarowski. Assistant Joe Prunty will take the reins of the bench as interim until the incorporation of a new one is closed head coach.
The coach had considered resigning at the end of December although later reports suggested management would wait until the summer to part ways. One of the main sources of this détente would derive from McMillan’s growing tension with the team’s top star, Trae Young.
His relationship with management has been good, according to previous reports from Shams Charania, but not with a section of the locker room, something McMillan himself acknowledged. “I am coaching a different generation of players that I played with and subsequently coached. Now it’s different how you communicate, how the game is played and how the players see the game.”
McMillan was named the team’s interim coach in March 2021 following the firing of Lloyd Pierce. Atlanta staged an amazing run to the Eastern Conference Finals, prompting the Hawks to drop the interim tag and give him a four-year contract in July 2021. However, the Hawks haven’t been able to even come close to this. achievement and currently sit eighth in the East with a 29-30 record.
According to Wojnarowski, former Utah Jazz coach Quin Snyder is emerging as the leading candidate to replace McMillan, with Charles Lee and Kenny Atkinson also in the pipeline. The journalist Shams Charania also includes Jordi Fernández, an assistant for the Kings, and Mitch Johnson, an assistant in San Antonio, on the list of potential candidates.
(Cover photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
