The Iowa Energy lost the only head coach in franchise history this offseason when Nick Nurse decided to take the same position with rival D-League franchise Rio Grande Valley. The team's head coach in waiting, Nate Bjorkgren, was hired by the Dakota Wizards right before that happened, however, leading to the team needing to go on a coaching search.

That coaching search ended on Tuesday, though, when the team's front office decided that former Utah Flash head coach Kevin Young was the right man for the job. Young was effectively a free agent due to the Flash ceasing operations at the end of the 2010-11 season after finishing with a 28-22 record and eventually losing in the first round of the NBA Development League playoffs to his new employers.

Young has had a rather interesting ascension to his current position.

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The Texas Legends' coaching vacancy was one of the hardest to figure out all offseason, especially when the Bruce Pearl courting came to an end. That, we now know, was because the heir to Nancy Lieberman's former post was in-house all along.

Del Harris will be named the second head coach in team history, as first reported by ESPN's Marc Stein. Harris has worked closely with Legends' owner -- and Dallas Mavericks president of basketball operations -- Donnie Nelson in the past and served as the D-League team's general manager last season after most recently serving as an assistant to the New Jersey Nets.

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Paul Mokeski took the long way to a head coaching job, but the longtime assistant coach has finally earned his first head coaching opportunity. The former NBA player will be named the head coach of the Reno Bighorns later this afternoon.

Mokeski pursued many of the head coaching positions open this summer and after what looked like would end up being the D-League's version of "always the bridesmaid but never the bride," the Bighorns finally decided that he would get the promotion he's been working toward.

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Nick Nurse's decision to take the Rio Grande Valley Vipers head coaching job after leading the Iowa Energy to the D-League championship last season was a bit perplexing at first glance. The only coach in the history of the Iowa franchise explained his decision to the local newspaper on Monday, however, making a lot of sense in the process.

"It was a chance to grow. I did about as much as I could do (in Iowa)," Nurse told the Des Moines Register. "I don't devalue the 50 or 60 games a year that I coached there. That's great experience. But a lot of times (NBA executives) will hire people they know a little better."

This is something I mentioned in the original story on Sunday and it's why the jobs with direct NBA affiliations are premium in the D-League coaching circles. It's likely part of the reason Eric Musselman made a similar move from the Reno Bighorns to the Los Angeles D-Fenders as well as the reason Bob MacKinnon's new job as head coach of the Springfield Armor, a team that has won just 20 of their 100 games in franchise history, was one of the most coveted positions available this summer.

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Nick Nurse was expected to transition from his role as head coach of the NBA Development League champion Iowa Energy into an assistant coach on an NBA team's bench this summer. The NBA lockout put a bit of a burden on those plans, however, so Nurse made a different move up the coaching ladder.

Nurse will be named the new head coach the Rio Grande Valley Vipers at a press conference on Monday, according to multiple sources close to the situation, succeeding Chris Finch in the role with the D-League team ran by the Houston Rockets. The transition should be fairly seamless, too, as the reigning D-League Coach of the Year serves as an assistant under Finch with the Great Britain National Team.

The move is interesting considering Nurse is coming off of a D-League title with the Energy, but the chance to coach with an NBA-affiliated team probably was the reason he decided to leave Iowa. It also probably doesn't hurt that he'll be close to Finch -- promoted to the Rockets' bench earlier this offseason -- and likely in line for a similar promotion down the road.

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The New Jersey Nets have made their second head coaching hire during the Mikhail Prokhorov era, bringing aboard Bob MacKinnon to coach the team's NBA D-League affiliate Springfield Armor. The deal will be made official later this afternoon at a press conference.

The Nets, who took over the basketball operations of the NBA Development League's Armor earlier this offseason, hired MacKinnon after unceremoniously allowing Dee Brown to walk. Brown eventually ended up taking a job with the Detroit Pistons after guiding the Armor to a 20-80 record during his stint as the only coach in the franchise's young history.

MacKinnon is no stranger to the D-League, or coaching in general, for that matter. The son of Bob MacKinnon, Sr., (a longtime ABA/NBA coach and front office executive) the younger MacKinnon has previously coached the Colorado 14ers and Idaho Stampede in the D-League before coaching in China this past season. Prior to guiding the 14ers to a championship during the 2008-09 season, his first in the D-League, MacKinnon had been employed as a scout for the Los Angeles Lakers following stints as an assistant coach at Notre Dame, North Carolina and Marshall.

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Bruce Pearl flirted with the D-League for a few months. Unfortunately, crossing "seeing Bruce Pearl in the Bismarck Civic Center" off of my bucket list doesn't seem like it will happen anytime soon ... unless a grocery trade show comes through the booming metropolis, that is.

The former Tennessee Volunteers head coach has accepted a job with the wholesale grocery distributing company H.T. Hackney as vice president of marketing and will start his new job on Thursday. There's no word yet on if his salary is anything close to the $500,000 that Donnie Nelson was offering Pearl to coach the Dallas Mavericks' D-League affiliate Texas Legends.

All in all, I'm sort of disappointed this is done, despite my complaints to the contrary. Pearl would have probably brought more eyeballs to the NBA Development League -- even if they were only Andy Katz's -- and that's ultimately what the league needs to continue on its uphill path to legitimacy in the eyes of the basketball-following public.

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Bruce Pearl seems like he's a pretty charismatic, fan-friendly, tell it like it is sort of guy. There are plenty of circumstances that have made this apparent during his coaching career, but the former Tennessee Volunteers coach probably made that point most clear during an interview with Dan Patrick on Friday morning.

Pearl, currently deciding whether or not to become the head coach of the NBA D-League's Texas Legends, told Patrick (via SportsGrid) that he wouldn't even hire himself at this point in his career.

"I wouldn't hire me right now," Pearl said. "I would not hire me right now."

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