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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It's a sad thing to say, but I think I'm tired of Bruce Pearl, at least regarding his new job possibly being in the NBA Development League. This isn't to say that I won't be excited when his name brings more eyeballs to the D-League or even that I'll be disappointed if he ultimately does end up as the next head coach of the Texas Legends, just that I wish something would happen, regardless.

Pearl was first mentioned as a possible head coach for the Maine Red Claws on May 20 -- a job he turned down, according to multiple sources -- and has somehow managed to stay relevant to the Ridiculous Upside readers by way of the Legends' current courting session.

So today, when I realized that Ridiculous Upside was picking up hits relating to the former Tennessee Volunteers coach, I was hopeful that he'd announced his intentions, either way, regarding a D-League coaching stint for the upcoming season. Instead, he's back in the news because the NCAA has decided to further sanction him and his former staff.

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Eric Musselman has been hired by the Los Angeles Lakers to be head coach of the team's D-League affiliate Los Angeles D-Fenders, the team announced on Thursday. Musselman coached the NBA Development League's Reno Bighorns this past season after a brief layoff in his coaching career.

Musselman is currently serving as head coach of the Venezuelan National Team, but previous coaching stops include stints as head coach of both the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings as well as serving as the Dominican Republic's head coach.

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Sebastian Pruiti is the type of dude everyone likes to see succeed. So naturally, when he emailed me on Tuesday to tell me the Fort Wayne Mad Ants made him a part of their basketball operations staff next season, I was excited.

The Mad Ants coaching staff also includes head coach Joey Meyer and excellent assistant Steve Gansey (brother of Mike). They'll be affiliated with the Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks this season -- if this season ever happens.

Pruiti broke into the mainstream with his work over at ESPN TrueHoop's NBA Playbook, but he's also contributed to Basketball Prospectus, Draft Express, SB Nation and The New York Times -- among others -- while showing off his basketball acumen. Said acumen has now put Pruiti on the first step to what should eventually be the road to a full-time, paid gig coaching basketball.

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The New Jersey Nets decision to name Milton Lee the general manager of their NBA D-League team, the Springfield Armor, typically wouldn't warrant a post on this wonderful website you are currently visiting. Lee seems like an interesting guy, however, so let's take a minute to talk about him.

Lee's duties with the Armor will include selection of the team's head coach and coaching staff, according to a press release issued by the team, as well as assembling the Armor roster for the upcoming 2011-12 season.

The latter part, regarding the Armor's roster, is where it might get interesting because as far as I'm aware, Lee will be the first D-League front office member with an extensive background in statistical analysis.

In an interview he did with the Wall Street Journal last year, the former Wall Street trader's explained that his specialty is in numbers.

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