The New York Knicks are eyeing to add NBA Summer League champion coach Chris Jent to Mike Brown’s coaching staff, SiriusXM’s NBA Radio host Frank Isola reports.
“Hornets assistant coach Chris Jent has emerged as the leading candidate to join Mike Brown’s Knicks staff as offensive coordinator. Jent, who played one season for the Knicks, recently coached the Hornets to the Summer League title,” Isola wrote on X.
Jent had a brief stint with the Knicks during the 1996-97 season. He appeared in only three games, averaging 2.0 points.
Getty Head coach Chris Jent of the Charlotte Hornets looks on in the first half of a 2025 NBA Summer League game against the Dallas Mavericks.
Jent was also on Brown’s coaching staff in Cleveland from 2006 to 2009. He recently guided the Charlotte Hornets to the NBA Summer League title in Las Vegas — the first championship of any kind for the franchise.
The 55-year-old Jent has been working as an assistant coach in the NBA since 2003. He once coached the Orlando Magic in an interim capacity during the 2004-05 season and logged a 5-13 win-loss record. His other head coaching experience was in the NBA D League (now G League) with the Bakersfield Jam (now the Motor City Cruise) during the 2015-16 season.
Jent is the most experienced assistant coach on the Hornets staff.
Knicks Set to Hire Clippers’ Defensive Coach
Previously, Isola also reported that the Knicks were closing in on hiring Los Angeles Clippers assistant coach Brendan O’Connor.
“O’Connor worked as a Knicks assistant under Larry Brown and has close ties to Knicks executive William Wesley,” Isola reported on X.
Wesley, known as “World Wide Wes,” was a power broker behind the scenes during Brown’s coaching stints in Detroit and Philadelphia.
Stefan Bondy of the New York Post confirmed Isola’s report and added that O’Connor will serve as the defensive coordinator and not an associate head coach.
Brendan O’Connor Coming into a ‘Really Good’ Situation
Before his short-lived stop in New York in 2005, O’Connor was with Brown on the Detroit Pistons championship team in 2004. O’Connor started his NBA coaching journey as an advanced scout for the Pistons in 2000 under George Irvine and later on under Rick Carlisle before Brown elevated him to the bench.
After New York, O’Connor reunited with Eric Musselman, who first gave him his first coaching break at the defunct USBL, in Sacramento for a season. Then he rejoined Brown for several years in Charlotte before joining Brooklyn with P.J. Carlesimo.
In 2013, Rivers hired him as an assistant coach with the Clippers, where he has been for the past 12 years.
In a 2023 interview with Ball 603, O’Connor said it’s hard to leave the Clippers, who have a champion coach in Tyronne Lue and a great owner in Steve Ballmer.
“It would have to be a really good situation for me to leave here,” O’Connor said at the time. “It would be great to do all the things you want to try. But I love the position I am in right now.”
The Knicks are one of the favorites to win the Eastern Conference next season in the wake of serious injuries to Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum and Indiana Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton.
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