Coby Karl promoted to Sixers coaching staff, Mike Longabardi to take over G League’s Blue Coats

Delaware Blue Coats coach Coby Karl, who guided the 76ers’ affiliate to the 2023 G League championship, will join Nick Nurse’s Sixers staff as an assistant coach, a league source confirmed to The Inquirer.

Veteran coach Mike Longabardi will replace Karl with the Blue Coats.

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Karl, the son of Hall of Fame coach George Karl, was hired to lead the Blue Coats before the 2021-22 season. Under his watch, Delaware won the 2021 G League Showcase Cup, then advanced to the 2022 finals before winning the franchise’s first title this past spring. Along the way, Karl helped develop young Sixers players such as Paul Reed and Jaden Springer.

Karl’s promotion is another sign of the value Nurse puts on G League experience. Nurse was a coach at that level (then called the D-League) with the Iowa Energy and Rio Grande Valley Vipers from 2007-13. He won two championships and was named Coach of the Year in 2011. Fellow Sixers assistant Bryan Gates was the D-League Coach of the Year in 2007 and 2008, while leading the Idaho Stampede. Bobby Jackson, another new Sixers assistant, was most recently the coach of the Stockton Kings, the Sacramento Kings’ G League affiliate.

Rico Hines and Doug West are the other assistants confirmed to be joining Nurse’s staff.

Longabardi previously had been an NBA assistant for two decades. The defensive-minded coach was on staff with the 2008 Boston Celtics (led by former Sixers coach Doc Rivers) and 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers that won NBA titles. His other stops include the Houston Rockets (2003-07), Phoenix Suns (2013-15), Washington Wizards (2019-21), Sacramento Kings (2021-22), and Atlanta Hawks (2022-23).

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