Avery Johnson, the former Nets head coach now at Alabama, said Jerry Stackhouse’s grooming as a future NBA head man started in Brooklyn. Now Johnson feels Stackhouse is ready to take over the Knicks.
Johnson, who coached Stackhouse from 2004-08 in Dallas, summoned him to Brooklyn to finish out his 18-year playing career in 2012-13 — more as an unofficial player-coach than as a key rotation piece.
“The tail end of our tenures in Dallas, I knew coaching was in his future,’’ Johnson told The Post in a phone interview Monday. “When I brought him to the Nets, it wasn’t necessarily to help us on the court.