According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Denver Nuggets have added Charles Klask as an assistant coach on Michael Malone’s staff.
Klask was an assistant coach on Stan Van Gundy’s staff last season for the Detroit Pistons where his responsibilities included game-plan preparation, statistical analysis and scouting. A Michigan native, Klask got his start in the NBA as a video coordinator for the Pistons back in 2001. His resume includes stops in Orlando and Brooklyn before returning to Detroit in 2015. Van Gundy was let go by the Pistons in May along with his assistants.
In an interview with MLive, Klask explained how he went into debt when he first pursued his dream of coaching professionally:
“My final year of college, I did the thing — sent my resume to every team in the league, every minor league team. And the guy in Grand Rapids said ‘Sure, come back and you can work with us. But it can’t be paid the first year.’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’ I considered it my tuition in grad school for coaching. I would just go into debt, take out credit cards, live off what I could live off, do a part-time job on the side and do this. So that’s what I did for two years, and now he was the video guy for the (Detroit) Shock and the assistant video guy for the Pistons. He didn’t want to do the Shock anymore — it was a long Pistons season, he wanted to get back into coaching. But he couldn’t leave, so he asked if I could just take it. So I took it, worked with Greg Williams and his staff. It was a great experience. It was (Rick) Carlisle’s first season and I was going to continue through the winter, but the same situation — it wasn’t going to be paid.”
Known around the league as a “stats guy,” Klask says that he tries to “back up all of my thoughts and ideas with numbers.” In the video below he explains some of the work that he did on coach Lawrence Frank’s staff in Detroit.
Klask will replace Micah Nori who left, ironically enough, for the Detroit Pistons earlier this summer.
