Hawks name Joe Prunty interim head coach

According to David Suggs of The Sporting News on Tuesday, the Atlanta Hawks have named Joe Prunty of Sunnyvale, California as their new interim head coach. Prunty takes over from Nate McMillan who was fired today.

It should be reiterated that Prunty is the Hawks’s interim head coach and Atlanta is actively searching for a new bench boss. One must also remember that when the Brooklyn Nets fired Steve Nash earlier this season and named Jacque Vaughn as the interim head coach, it did not take long before the Nets took off the interim tag and named Vaughn as their head coach. 

The Hawks are currently in eighth place in the Eastern Conference. They have a record of 29 wins and 30 losses for a winning percentage of .492. At this time, the Hawks would be joined by the Miami Heat, Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference play-in tournament.

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This will be the second time in his NBA coaching career that Prunty has been named an interim head coach. He was previously the Milwaukee Bucks’s interim head coach during the 2017-18 season. That year he coached 37 regular season games and had a record of 21 wins and 16 losses. The Bucks were good enough to get into the postseason, but lost in seven games to the Boston Celtics.

Prunty has been a long-time assistant coach in the NBA. He was with the San Antonio Spurs from 1996 to 2005, the Dallas Mavericks from 2005 to 2008, the Portland Trail Blazers from 2008 to 2010, the Cleveland Cavaliers from 2010 to 2013, the Brooklyn Nets from 2013 to 2014, the Bucks from 2014 to 2018, the Phoenix Suns in 2018 to 2019, and the Hawks since 2021. While with the Spurs, Prunty won three NBA Finals in 1999, 2003 and 2005.

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