A former Indiana Hoosier has landed an NBA head coaching job for the second consecutive day.
The Portland Trail Blazers are hiring Micah Nori as their next head coach, the franchise announced Tuesday. Nori gets his first-ever head coaching job after spending five years as lead assistant for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Middletown, Ohio native didn’t play for Indiana men’s basketball. But Nori played for IU baseball from 1994-97, and later returned in 2005 for a short stint as Indiana’s hitting coach, before eventually joining the Toronto Raptors as an assistant coach in 2009.
This is the less shocking move of the two former Hoosiers to take over NBA teams. Monday saw Dusty May — former IU men’s basketball manager and eventual national title-winning head coach at Michigan — leave the reigning champions to become head coach of the Dallas Mavericks.
Nori and May are the only current head coaches with IU ties. But they’re joined in the NBA coaching ranks by Mike Woodson, who’s currently associate head coach of the Sacramento Kings.
Prior to his time with the Timberwolves, Nori worked as an assistant coach with four other NBA teams. He spent four years with the Raptors, then went to the Kings for two years. After that, he joined the Denver Nuggets for three seasons, and then he went to the Detroit Pistons for three more years. Nori became Chris Finch’s lead assistant in Minnesota after his time in Detroit.
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