Bobby Jackson is set to join Nick Nurse’s Sixers staff.
The Sixers are hiring Jackson as an assistant coach, a source confirmed Sunday to NBC Sports Philadelphia. Marc Stein first reported the news.
Jackson’s last job was as head coach of the Stockton Kings, which is the Sacramento Kings’ G League affiliate. He led Stockton to a G League-best record of 25-7 during the 2022-23 regular season. The Kings lost a tight game to the Sioux Falls Skyforce in the playoffs and the Delaware Blue Coats (the Sixers' affiliate) ultimately won the G League title.
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Before his first season coaching Stockton, Jackson led the Kings to the Las Vegas summer league championship.
“I told them training camp was going to be hard, but I kept preaching teamwork, chemistry, having each other's backs, defending at a high level, making other teams uncomfortable, and taking things away,” Jackson said following that 2021 summer league title, per a NBC Sports Bay Area story by James Ham. “The offensive side of the ball will come, as long as we approach it in the right way.”
Since retiring following a 12-year NBA playing career, Jackson has served in a variety of coaching roles. In addition to his work with the Kings, Jackson also spent time as a Timberwolves player development coach under Rick Adelman, who’d coached him in Sacramento. He seemingly had no hesitation about pushing players.
“(Adelman) called to say I was working the guys too hard,” Jackson said in 2013, per The Minneapolis Star Tribune. “He said, ‘I want them to have some legs when training camp starts.’ I had to cut the workouts to one a day.”
NBA
Jackson’s playing experience will presumably be useful in coaching young Sixers guards Tyrese Maxey, Jaden Springer and De’Anthony Melton. There are certainly some similarities between Maxey and the 6-foot-1 Jackson, who was a speedy, high-energy guard capable of game-turning bursts off the bench. Jackson earned the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award for the 2002-03 season.
Sam Cassell, who’d been influential in Maxey’s development the past three years, is moving from the Sixers’ coaching staff to the Celtics’.