Pacers hearth Nate McMillan immediately after being swept in initial round of playoffs

The Indiana Pacers have fired coach Nate McMillan right after his crew was swept in the very first round of the playoffs by the Miami Heat.

The shift will come just after the Pacers experienced reworked the remaining calendar year of McMillan’s contract for 2020-21 and extra a workforce choice for 2021-22 in the variety of a delicate extension earlier this month.

Houston Rockets mentor Mike D’Antoni, who is in the ultimate yr of his contract, will be an Indiana target should he turn into accessible, resources notify ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Indiana also options to research from a pool of candidates they’d look at “method builders” about the extensive-term, sources convey to Wojnarowski.

In 4 seasons as the Pacers’ mentor, McMillan had a 183-136 report, which include 3-16 in the postseason. Indiana was swept in the initially spherical in each individual of the past two seasons.

The Pacers haven’t arrived at the second round because appearing in the Jap Meeting finals in 2013 and 2014, and after Monday’s decline to Miami, Indiana has dropped a franchise-report 9 consecutive playoff game titles.

Injuries have played a key purpose in the failures. Soon after having swept by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017, the Pacers performed very last season without having two-time All-Star Victor Oladipo, who suffered a critical knee damage, and without All-Star forward Domantas Sabonis mainly because of a foot injury versus the Heat.

“On behalf of the Simon family and the Pacers firm, I would like to thank Nate for his decades with the staff,” Pacers president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard stated in a statement. “This was a pretty hard decision for us to make but we come to feel it truly is in the best desire of the firm to transfer in a diverse route. Nate and I have been by the great situations and the lousy instances and it was an honor to work with him for people 11 many years (in Indiana and Portland).”

McMillan has a 661-588 occupation document in 16 seasons as a head mentor for Seattle, Portland and Indiana.

The Associated Push contributed to this report.