The Pacers, who never won more than three games in a row, took a gamble on a young coach in Nate Bjorkgren and finished ninth in the East.
Expected to bring the Indiana Pacers into the “modern” era of coaching, Nate Bjorkgren had the plug pulled after his first year on the job as he was fired Wednesday, according to a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. A Carroll native, and former Northern Iowa basketball player, Bjorkgren went 34-38 in his only season as a head coach, hired from the Toronto Raptors where he had been an assistant under Nick Nurse and won the 2019 NBA championship. The Pacers won its first game in the NBA play-in tournament over Charlotte, but were blitzed by Washington,142-115, failing to make the playoffs. Who’s next?: Possible Pacers coaching candidates to replace fired Nate Bjorkgren While injuries certainly contributed to the Pacers limping to the finish line, they were underperforming long before Myles Turner was lost for the last 19 games with turf toe on his right foot, Jeremy Lamb’s surgically repaired left leg cost him the last 17 games and Malcolm Brogdon’s right hamstring soreness kept him on the shelf for the final 10.
