The Indiana Pacers have hired Toronto Raptors assistant Nate Bjorkgren as their next head coach, per The Athletic’s Shams Charania.
Bjorkgren has been an assistant with the Raptors since 2018 after Nick Nurse became the coach in Toronto. Bjorkgren worked with Nurse previously with the G League affiliate team formerly known as the Iowa Energy from 2007-2011. He’s also served as an assistant with the Phoenix Suns, under, then, coach Jeff Hornacek.
He’s worked his way up from being a high school coach in Phoenix, Arizona to the G League, where he won a championship in 2011, an assistant on the 2019 Raptors championship team and now he has his first shot at a head coaching gig. Throughout his G League coaching career, he’s compiled a 126-74 record with four different teams.
Nurse confirmed that Bjorkgren was going to be a finalist for the Indiana position during an interview with Sirus XM NBA Radio back in September, where he spoke highly of his, now, former assistant.
“Nate Bjorkgren has been with me a long time,” Nurse said. “(He) was with me in the minor leagues with the Iowa Energy, then he coached a long time in the D-League and the G League and obviously been with me in Toronto here. He’s going to be a finalist for the Pacers job and he’s a good one.”
Nurse and Bjorkgren have a storied history as the two have not only coached together through the G League and the NBA, but have also gone head-to-head as coaches, too. During the 2013 D-League championship, Bjokgren’s Santa Cruz Warriors lost to Nurse’s Rio Grande Vipers, and after the two coaches exchanged pleasantries following the game, Bjokgren said that Nurse told him that they could both be coaching at the next level.
“He said, ‘There’s no reason why we couldn’t do this at the next level,'” Bjorkgren said in an interview with the Des Moines Register after the Raptors won the NBA championship. “And sure enough, he’s been right on a number of things, and he was right there again.”
Nurse is now right again, as Bjorkgren will be joining him in the head coaching ranks in the NBA.
With the hire of Bjorkgren, the Pacers are hoping that a new coach in the locker room will finally get this team over the hump of many first-round exits in the postseason. The Pacers were swept by the Heat in the NBA bubble, but injuries to several key players certainly played a factor in that.
Bjorkgren will inherit an Indiana team that is full of promise, with All-Star’s Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis, as well as Malcolm Brogdon, Myles Turner and T.J. Warren. This is a defensively-stout team that hasn’t reached its potential yet, or really had much time to develop any sort of chemistry, so Bjorkgren will have the opportunity to help create an identity for this team.
—CBSSPORTS