3:29pm: Scalabrine will work with the Santa Cruz Warriors, tweets Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group.
1:56pm: Mark Jackson has attempted to become a candidate for several head coaching vacancies over the past several months, including the Clippers and Nets openings, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. A dispute over assistant coach Brian Scalabrine is the latest in a series of disagreements between the Warriors and Jackson, who’s come under increased scrutiny from the front office. The coach’s contract runs through 2014/15, but there have been no extension talks, and none are expected to occur, Wojnarowski writes.
The Warriors are reassigning Scalabrine at the behest of Jackson, in spite of the assistant’s popularity with the front office and ownership, Wojnarowski reports. It’s unclear what Scalabrine’s new role will be, but Warriors management wants to keep him within the organization. The Warriors have decided that they want to let Jackson have decision-making power regarding his staff, but Jackson’s struggles to manage the staff and foster a functional working environment threaten his job security, sources tell Wojnarowski. Kings coach Michael Malone, a former Warriors assistant, went weeks without speaking to Jackson last season, Wojnarowski hears.
Jackson has drawn mention as a possible candidate for the Knicks job, but it’s unclear if that holds true now that Phil Jackson is in charge of basketball decisions for New York. Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob recently said there was “pressure” on Mark Jackson, but it’s unclear if he meant to imply that it was related to his job security or just the common, day-to-day pressure inherent with an NBA head coaching gig. Lacob recently told Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group that he would evaluate the coach after the season.
“I do think our coach has done a good job; we have had some big wins, a lot of wins on the road, and that’s usually a sign of good coaching,” Lacob said to Kawakami. “But some things are a little disturbing; the lack of being up for some of these games at home, that’s a concern to me.”
The Warriors picked up Jackson’s team option for 2014/15 this past July, and Lacob said at the time that he envisioned Jackson remaining his coach for the long-term. That was after the Nets hired Jason Kidd and the Clippers brought in Doc Rivers, but just how much Lacob knew about Jackson’s reported desire for other jobs is not clear.