JULY 8: The Hawks have officially announced McMillan’s new long-term deal with the team.
“The incredible job Nate did after taking over this season made this an easy decision,” Schlenk said in a statement. “We were able to see how gifted a tactician, motivator and leader he is first-hand and the high level of respect and trust he earned from our players made securing him as our head coach our top priority.”
JULY 5: The Hawks have an agreement in place with Nate McMillan that will make him the team’s permanent head coach, president of basketball operations Travis Schlenk told reporters today (Twitter link via Chris Kirschner of The Athletic). McMillan’s new contract will be a four-year deal, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link).
Schlenk said the two sides are “drawing up” the contract, so an official announcement should come soon (Twitter link via Michael Scotto of HoopsHype). According to Schlenk, the Hawks and McMillan reached a deal in principle on the morning after the squad advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals (Twitter link via Marc Stein).
McMillan began the 2020/21 season as an assistant on Lloyd Pierce‘s staff. However, after Atlanta got off to a 14-20 start, Pierce was let go and McMillan took over as the interim head coach. The Hawks finished the season on a 27-11 run and then beat the Knicks and Sixers in the first two rounds of the playoffs before pushing the Bucks to six games in the Eastern Finals.
Although they entered the year with playoff aspirations, even the Hawks weren’t counting on getting to within two wins of the NBA Finals. McMillan helped Atlanta exceed expectations in both the regular season and the postseason, all but guaranteeing the team would attempt to keep him around on a permanent basis.
There were rumors that the veteran coach – who previously led the Pacers, Trail Blazers, and SuperSonics – might draw interest from other suitors, but it appears he never seriously considered moving elsewhere. Schlenk said today that the Hawks offered McMillan the permanent job before the regular season ended (Twitter link via Kirschner).
McMillan has an overall regular season record of 688-599 (.535) during his NBA coaching career. That puts him 20th overall on the all-time list of coaching victories, and fourth among active head coaches, behind only Gregg Popovich, Doc Rivers, and Rick Carlisle.
well deserved
And why is this a story . If they fire him that would of been the dumbest thing ever. He took a very young team to the Easter conference finals. He deserves to stay .
Would have been even dumber than the Pacers replacing him with Nate Bjorkgren.
It’s called “news”. They’re just reporting it.
I guess it has to be a story on the site, but yeah this should have been a given
I would rather read this than something like this “ This day 6 years ago Jump shooter was re signed “.
There was also a rumor about 10 days to 2 weeks ago that they hadn’t done this yet because he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a head coach again. So, yes this is newsworthy
Hawks have 6 rookies contracts, all good
Young
Reddish
Hunter
Okongwu
Collins
Huerter
Give GM credit
But he signed Gallinari for over 20M per…
6 players total salary $30 million
John Wall salary $43 million
Yeah that Gallinari move was ridiculous.
It’s not super ridiculous. No one wanted to go to the Hawks. They’ve been terrible for how long prior to this year? They had to overpay to get anyone to come. It comes with the territory of not being a traditionally desirable location (like the Lakers) with no real ‘superstars’ (not discounting Trae, but he was viewed as a stat accumulator and not a star prior to this year).
Lol, Gallo was clutch for the Hawks on the playoffs. When you have all the rookie contracts the Hawks have its easy to overspend a little for a vet.
You have a salary cap minimum to hit. They had to sign someone. Dano played Great his contract ends when the young players get their money.
Great news! Hope we look even better after going thru a whole training camp with Nate in charge
You’ll find your answer by looking at all the other teams Nate has been in charge of since training camp. They’ll be pretty good but just one star is not going to get it done. They need a couple more to win a ring.
I think they could be willing to do that.., the evidence being signing Big Money free agents like Gallinari and Bojdanovich. They need to swing a trade for a big game hunter though. Trae young can’t do it himself.
Did the Hawks or McMillan really have Lloyd’s back all along??
That had to be the easiest decision to make since picking Barkley first in that commercial…
Beat me to it. I was about to post the same thing. Nice one.
Great minds!
Atlanta reminds me of Miami last year. Got on a roll later in the season and rode it deep into the playoffs. Then they crashed a bit the next year. We’ll see.
Duh
Oh really !!!! They should give him a bonus for this yr.
How permanent is a head coach really tho?
Four year contract, supposedly rich owner… should be good for two more years at least.
They wanted him as HC all along.
Wonder who will be the last to know…
DOH …….