The Pelicans have hired Warriors assistant Alvin Gentry as their next head coach. Gentry will start as soon as his duties with Golden State during the NBA Finals are over.
Despite making the Playoffs, New Orleans fired head coach Monty Williams after a four-game sweep at the hands of the Warriors. Several names were reportedly linked as possible candidates for the job, including John Calipari, Jeff Van Gundy and Vinny Del Negro.
Gentry was previously a head coach with the Heat, Pistons, Clippers and Suns where he compiled a 335-370 career record.
According to Marc Spears of Yahoo! Sports it’s a four-year, $13.75M deal, including a $4M team option in final season. Here’s the official announcement from the team’s website:
The New Orleans Pelicans named Alvin Gentry the team’s head coach, it was announced today by Senior Vice President of Basketball Operations/General Manager Dell Demps. Per team policy, terms of the contract were not released.
Gentry becomes the sixth head coach in franchise history.
“We are excited to announce that Alvin Gentry is the new head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans. We warmly welcome Alvin and his family to the Pelicans organization,” said Demps. “After assessing our team, along with the core values of the Pelicans, we created a list of characteristics and qualities we wanted in our head coach. We conducted an extensive coaching search that identified Alvin Gentry as the right person to lead our team.”
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Gentry, who currently serves as the associate head coach for the Golden State Warriors, will begin his duties with the Pelicans immediately following the 2015 NBA Finals.
