With the regular season winding down, there are several candidates for NBA Coach of the Year. Let’s dive in to the case for each coach to win the award.
Coaching is one of the hardest things to evaluate in professional sports. How can we truly tell when a coach is doing a good or bad job? When a team exceeds expectations, do we give most of the recognition to the coach? Vice-versa, when a team underachieves, is the coach the person who deserves the most blame?
Because we as fans and analysts aren’t in the locker rooms, there’s no way of knowing the true reasons a team over/underachieves. Regardless, the head coach is the first person to receive acclaim or criticism.
The other tough thing to evaluate when handing out an award like Coach of the Year is which coaching job deserves the most attention? Is it dramatically turning your team around from bottom three in the standings to the playoffs? Is it greatly exceeding expectations right from the start of the season?
Those storylines are present in various ways with this season’s candidates for the award. From Mike D’Antoni and Scott Brooks to Erik Spoelstra, there are three clear candidates vying for the award this season. Before I get in to how I would rank the three coaches, let’s step back and gain some background information on past Coaches of the Year.
As my colleague Dar-Wei Chen pointed out in his article for 16 Wins A Ring regarding the Coach of the Year race, there are certain indications that point to a clear frontrunner this season: Mike D’Antoni. Those indications? How teams perform relative to their preseason expectations. Here’s the proof (from the award winners since the 2002-03 season):
Now that we have some history on the main reason why coaches are given the award, let’s evaluate how this season’s candidates fare:
There’s your reasoning as to why most people have D’Antoni as their frontrunner this season. The Houston Rockets are blowing away their preseason expectations. Why isn’t the race decided already, you may ask? Because the turnarounds that have occurred in Washington and Miami are nothing short of incredible.
So without further ado, let’s get to my rankings of the top three candidates for NBA Coach of the Year this season.