NBA: Top 10 candidates for 2018-19 Coach of the Year award
1. Brad Stevens, Boston Celtics
No disrespect to Dwane Casey, but it was a pretty massive upset for him to win Coach of the Year over Brad Stevens, who somehow finished third in the voting. This is a regular season award, of course, but Stevens did more than enough during the 82-game campaign to be the favorite, and the playoffs only reinforced his mettle as one of the game’s elite basketball minds and motivators.
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For starters, there’s the obvious: The Boston Celtics won 55 freaking games despite losing Gordon Hayward (their second- or third-best player), for the entire season on opening night. Then there’s the fact that they hung on for the No. 2 seed in the East despite Kyrie Irving, their biggest offensive weapon, being out from mid-March onward.
The playoffs don’t factor in here, but the Celtics were then able to storm their way to within one game of the NBA Finals despite missing both Kyrie and Hayward for the entire postseason. They took LeBron James to the very brink despite missing two of their best three players.
Maybe youngsters like Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Marcus Smart and Terry Rozier were always meant to shine in bigger minutes, but all of them at once, in the same season? That boils down to coaching, especially when you factor in Al Horford’s career year (impact-wise) at age 31, role players like Marcus Morris and Aron Baynes being better than ever and Boston’s top-ranked defense.
Oh and yeah, Horford (10 games), Brown (12), Kyrie (22), Morris (28) and Smart (28) all missed significant time too.
Next. Top 10 candidates for 2018-19 Rookie of the Year award. dark
Stevens not winning Coach of the Year last season was quite a surprise, even if Casey was a deserving candidate. With the Celtics poised to fill the King’s void as the new rulers of the East, a fully healthy season from Boston’s star players will only serve as a chance for the voters to redeem themselves and reward Brad Stevens with his first Coach of the Year award.