If there’s one person in the Nets organization that Long Island head coach Ronnie Burrell has tried to learn from the most, it’s his counterpart at the NBA level, Jacque Vaughn.
Burrell has been a part of the organization since he was an assistant coach for Long Island in 2019, with a gap in between when he joined the Chicago Bulls organization in 2020. And he has mimicked a bit of the success that Vaughn has had in Brooklyn out on Long Island.
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The Long Island Nets recently had a 16-game winning streak going and Burrell was named G-League Coach of the Month in both January and February. It was just the fourth time in NBA G-League history that such a feat occurred.
“I really really watch him closely because he’s just a super high-level coach,” Burrell said about Vaughn’s influence on him. “Everyone knows that he’s not in the position he’s in by accident. Very knowledgeable, excellent communicator, taking so many things from him. Learn from him and yeah we communicate as often or not often as you’d expect two coaches to be doing during the season. But when I see him, we always talk to each other and I can’t say enough about how much he’s helped me and what I’ve learned from that guy.”
Vaughn spoke highly of Burrell and the relationship that the two have developed prior to Tuesday’s Brooklyn Nets game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“I think a big part of it’s been support for each other. Whether I have a question about David Duke or Dru Smith, or whether he has a question about talking with players in different ways to get things done,” Vaughn said. “I think overall we have a great relationship because we respect each other and the route that he got to definitely respect it. I just think we can talk basketball and talk life at the same time, so appreciate that about Ronnie.”
It would be fair to say that Burrell hasn’t gotten to where he is by accident either.
The Long Island Nets coach has had a long career in basketball dating back to his college days at UNC Greensboro, where he played four years and was an All-Southern Conference Team selection in 2004 and 2005. He continued to play spending a year with the World Basketball Association’s Gainsville Knights before going to play in Europe after that, with two summers playing for the Seattle SuperSonics’ NBA Summer League team.
It was in 2019 that Burrell moved to the coaching ranks as an assistant for the Long Island Nets. All of those stops, Burrell told amNewYork, helped him become the coach that he is today.
“I remember almost every day of my basketball career going back to my college days as a player,” Burrell said. “I’ve been able to take these little pieces from all the places that I’ve been in all my journeys and kind of add them to my own personality and my own style I believe is still developing. I found a style of communication this year that I think works that I’m comfortable with and it’s natural to me.”
The Long Island Nets have hit a bit of a rough patch after winning 16 straight. They had dropped four straight going into Tuesday night’s game against Lakeland, but Burrell was confident things would turn around.
“Hopefully within the next couple of games, we need to get back to (our style of play), we haven’t lost our identity,” Burrell said.
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