Brad Stevens cannot be left behind in the Coach of the Year race
The last several games have served as a masterclass from Brad Stevens. Depleted not only of star players, but of key role players as well, the Boston Celtics coach has guided the franchise to five straight wins.
Not only has Boston won five straight; if you watch each game you will notice the difference Stevens’ coaching has made in determining a win from a loss. Wednesday night in Utah, the Jazz were on a hot streak in the third quarter and had opened up a nine point lead over Boston. Using quite literally every weapon at his disposal; Stevens rolled out a lineup featuring Semi Ojeleye, Greg Monroe and Aron Bayne; and had the team play a 2-3 zone on defense. The unconventional strategy worked and Boston rallied back.
Brad Stevens says he went to the 2-3 zone because “it allowed us to direct the pick-and-roll the way we wanted to direct it.”
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) March 29, 2018
At the end of the game Stevens, who is known for his deep playbook coming out of timeouts, sprung into action after the Celtics made a key defensive stop to give them the ball with the game tied and 14 seconds left on the clock. The end result was a beautifully designed play that got Jaylen Brown a wide-open look at the basket, which he buried to give Boston their fifth consecutive win.
Stevens has the Celtics playing at an extremely high level, even while having to play fringe NBA guys like Shane Larkin and Ojeleye 33 minutes per game. Stevens is highly regarded by the media and fellow NBA coaches; and his team is vastly exceeding expectations despite rotten injury luck, yet he likely will not win Coach of the Year.
The Coach of the Year award will most likely go to Dwane Casey of Toronto or Mike D’Antoni of Houston. The narrative has already been written for each of them. Casey, an underrated leader and motivator, has a chance to win 60 games with a team that has had little turnover from the previous seasons. Casey’s team is in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency and will likely be the number one seed in the East.
The narrative for D’Antoni is that he is/was ahead of his time by promoting small-ball with lots of three point attempts. His Rockets team has already eclipsed the 60 win mark and has won 27 out of their last 28. The system that D’Antoni has perfected is mimicked around the league; yet D’Antoni is still considered the mastermind.
Casey and D’Antoni are worthy candidates, but the argument for Stevens feels stronger. Casey, unlike Stevens, has been blessed with tremendous health. The Raptors most common lineup (Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, O.G. Anunoby, Serge Ibaka and Jonas Valanciunas) have missed only 22 games combined this season. Assuming Kyrie Irving does not return during the regular season, Irving himself would miss 22 games this season. Casey has done a great job this season; but a lot of Toronto’s improvement this season has been due to injury luck.
D’Antoni has also had good injury luck, although Chris Paul has missed some time, but the case against D’Antoni is that a lot of the time Houston feels like they are on auto-pilot. Houston is so efficient that they frequently open up 20 point leads in the first half, and have rarely had to make the kind of in-game adjustments that the Celtics have had. It also should be noted that D’Antoni in the past has flopped at coaching stops in New York and Los Angeles; his system is impressive when you have James Harden and Steve Nash running it, but I’m not sure he is a great coach.
Lastly, the Coach of the Year award tends to always go to the coach that exceeded expectations for his team or whoever had the best record that season; not necessarily the best coach. Since 2000, there have been plenty of coaches that had a good season but didn’t have great runs coaching a particular team (Sam Mitchell, Avery Johnson, George Karl, Hubie Brown, Mike Brown, Byron Scott) and are no longer head coaches in the NBA.
If the voters want to look at the big picture, they’ll see the work Stevens has done over the last several seasons in Boston. They will see how he has created a culture and a system that gets the most out of every player; as evidenced by the slew of former Celtics who underachieve after they leave (Jae Crowder, Evan Turner, Avery Bradley, Isaiah Thomas). They will see how Stevens has battled injuries to star players and gotten role players to step up in their place. They will see that Stevens’ in-game adjustments have swung more games this season than fans can remember.
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Or they will just vote for whoever has the best record. It’s their choice.