Brooklyn Nets assistant coach Lawrence Frank was demoted on Tuesday by Jason Kidd. As a result, Frank will no longer be on the bench during games and will not be coaching during team practices. Instead, Kidd has assigned him to providing daily reports.
Last month, word surfaced that Kidd and Frank were having friction. Frank was initially supposed to handle Brooklyn’s defensive schemes, which have not been effective during the team’s 5-13 start. But according to ESPNNewYork.com’s Ohm Youngmisuk and Marc Stein, the tension between Kidd and Frank began to build at the beginning of the season when Frank was not chosen to be the team’s interim head coach.
Kidd was suspended for two games for pleading guilty to driving while under the influence, and he chose assistant coach Joe Prunty to stand in for him while he was out. Unlike Prunty, Frank has previous head coaching experience. He was the head coach of the Nets from 2004-2010 and the Detroit Pistons from 2011-2013.
“This is the decision that I had to make, and we made it and we move on,” Kidd told reporters on Tuesday night after the Nets were trounced by the Denver Nuggets at home. “This is my decision in the sense of what I had to do. It’s about basketball. That’s it.”
The Nets initially planned to have Frank guide Kidd and help him make the transition from player to head coach, but the plan has obviously backfired. Kidd reportedly did not want someone telling him what to do, and as a result Frank is left with a role that seems much less significant than that of an assistant coach.
