Chris Kent’s first Austin Spurs staff is now complete, and the headliner is a familiar name with championship baggage.
On Friday morning, Austin announced that Carson Shanks, formerly the New York Knicks’ assistant director of video and analytics and player development, will serve as associate head coach. The team also promoted Tristen Licon, who spent last season as a basketball operations assistant, into the role of player development and performance coordinator.
The Spurs said in a press release that Jackie Hua will join as head athletic trainer and Kevin Williamson as strength and conditioning coach.
Shanks arrives with a résumé that runs through several levels of the game. A Minnesota native, he was a graduate transfer at Loyola University during the school’s 2018 Final Four run, a memorable march that ended with one of the most surprising tournament trips in recent memory. After a season playing professionally in Malta, he moved into coaching at North Dakota as a video coordinator, then spent two years as an assistant coach with the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
From there, Shanks worked two years in the Milwaukee Bucks organization, first as a player development and video assistant before becoming an assistant coach with the team’s G League affiliate. He then spent the last three years with the Knicks, including a role in their 2026 NBA championship run, which finished with a 4-1 NBA Finals win over San Antonio.
Licon’s promotion keeps him in Austin after a season in the basketball operations department. A former Division III player at Sul Ross State in Alpine, Texas, he transferred to Texas for his final college year and played under Chris Beard. When his playing days were over, Licon stayed with the Longhorns as a graduate assistant during Beard’s final two seasons.
He remained on Rodney Terry’s staff in 2024 and was later elevated to Texas’ director of player development before leaving for the professional ranks after Terry was fired and replaced by Sean Miller at the end of the 2025 season.
Kent’s first season at the helm will begin Nov. 8, when the Austin Spurs open the 2026 season at the H-E-B Center at Cedar Park against the New Orleans Pelicans-affiliate Laketown Squadron.
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Devin Vassell and the rest of the locker room sound well aware that last seasons success does not buy anything now. The expectations are obvious, but so is the work still required to turn a strong roster into a team that can handle the grind of another long season and another run through the West. For the Spurs, the next step is not about celebrating what happened before. It is about finding out whether the breakthrough can hold up when everyone is aiming at them. [Read more 🡒]