First of all, we gotta give a shout out to our good friend Ridiculous Scott over at Ridiculous Upside for cluing us in to this news earlier today (Did you like that Scott? FYI...I'm never going to refer to you on this site again without attaching the "Ridiculous" moniker before Scott) that Nate Tibbetts has been named the Head Coach of the Thunder owned D-League affiliate, Tulsa 66ers. So Nate Tibbetts, yeah, he's the new head coach of the Tulsa 66ers, and unless you are a hardcore D-League fan, you probably have no idea who this is. As a fairly new fan of the D-League, I'm not tremendously knowledgeable about him either, but I did a little digging so I could give you a bit more information on the guy, and try to figure out the reasons behind his hiring.

For the past two seasons, Nate has been the head coach of the Sioux Falls Skyforce, and the previous two years he was their assistant head coach. During his tenure in Sioux Falls, the Skyforce finished with a 53-47 record to go along with 1 playoff appearance. Before that he spent four seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Sioux Falls and helped to lead the Cougers to a 92-44 overall record along with two trips to the NAIA Division II Championships, and 1 final four appearance in said tournament. He also graduated from the University of South Dakota, so one thing you can gleam from this initial paragraph is that the guy has been ingrained in the Dakota area for quite some time, and it was not likely an easy task to convince him to make a change. Perhaps the Thunder have some long term plans they decided to share with Nate in an effort to entice him to make a change and leave the area he's been in for many years.