The New York Knicks are about to have a reunion nearly three decades in the making.
Veteran NBA assistant coach Chris Jent has emerged as a leading candidate to join the staff of new Knicks head coach Mike Brown, New York writer Frank Isola reported on Sunday. Isola notes that Jent would be serving as the team’s new offensive coordinator under Brown.
The 55-year-old Jent used to play professional basketball as a wing. While the vast majority of his pro career came overseas, he was on the Knicks during the 1996-97 season, appearing in three total games for them that year.
Jent has since gone on to make a name for himself as a coach. He has been an assistant coach in the NBA for nearly two decades now, including under Brown on the Cleveland Cavaliers from 2006-10. Jent currently serves as an assistant for the Charlotte Hornets and just led the team to the NBA Summer League championship last month.
As for the Knicks, they made the decision to fire head coach Tom Thibodeau earlier this summer despite Thibodeau leading the team to their first Eastern Conference Finals berth since 2000. Just last month, Brown, a former NBA Coach of the Year with the Sacramento Kings, was officially announced as Thibodeau’s replacement in New York.
The Knicks later decided to somewhat clean house on their coaching staff in order to help ease Brown’s transition. It appears that Jent will be one of the new names handpicked by Brown to serve on his staff in New York (though there are still some prominent holdovers left from Thibodeau’s old staff).