The Nets’ coaching staff has suffered some serious churn in Steve Nash’s first two offseasons. But Igor Kokoskov, who was hired over the summer to join Nash’s staff, isn’t just an addition — he’s a confidant.
Nash is coming off a summer that saw his resident superstar Kevin Durant try to get him fired, and walking into a season with enough unrest that he was recently booed by Nets fans at the team’s annual Practice in the Park. He’s going to need every ally and stalwart he can get, and Kokoskov qualifies as both.
“We go back a ways,” Nash said wistfully of Kokoskov, who’d worked with him from 2008-12 on the high-octane Suns. “I think he’s just helped me.
“In this league, I think most people have seen it all — most of us have seen everything — but he helped me in the summer really plan and organize how we want to disseminate our sets and our actions and implement them. He has been fantastic as far as helping me get clarity and organization and bounce ideas off him and start to build something.
