Even before the Nets put out a press release on the hiring of Kenny Atkinson as head coach, they quietly announced that Ronald Nored, then all of 25 years old, would be the first coach of the Long Island Nets.
Nored’s hiring was a bit unorthodox, starting with his youth. His resume, short as it was, included a stint as a head coach at a high school, Brownsburg in Indiana, where his friend and college teammate Gordon Hayward had played; a skills development gig in Boston with the Celtics; an assistant coaching job with the Maine Red Claws, Boston’s D-League affiliate, and two college jobs, as an assistant at South Alabama and as an assistant at Northern Kentucky University.