Boston Celtics: Brad Stevens is deserving of ‘Coach of the Year’ honors, but will likely not win

Under the guidance of Brad Stevens, the Boston Celtics find themselves in the midst of yet another successful season. Because of this, he is currently in the running for NBA Coach of the Year. However, the likelihood of him receiving the honor is not so high.

Another year, another successful campaign for the Boston Celtics. The C’s are on pace to reach their sixth straight postseason and, with the way things are going, will have home-court advantage for at least the first round.

Boston (38-16) holds both the third best record in the Eastern Conference & the fourth best record in the entire association and boasts one of the most efficient offensive (112.5) and defensive (105.7) units the league has to offer — top-5 ratings in both categories.

While it may be easy to chock up these successes in 2019-20 to the likes of their talented cast of ballers such as Kemba Walker, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Gordon Hayward and Marcus Smart — just to name a few — we would be remiss to not give credit to the head chef himself, Brad Stevens.

Since signing on as Head Coach back in 2013, Stevens has led Boston to five straight playoff berths, has coached them to four 48+ win seasons and has accumulated a record of 308-238 along the way.

Stevens’ tenure with the Boston Celtics has been one filled with far more ups than downs, and this season has proven to be one of his best with the franchise. Despite losing (arguably) their two best players this offseason in Kyrie Irving and Al Horford, while also dealing with a myriad of injuries amongst the team’s core rotation, Stevens has this shamrocks squad looking at a top-5 finish in the East’s standings and has both the C’s players and fans believing another long postseason run could be on the horizon.

For followers of the organization, Stevens’ coaching excellence has not gone unnoticed this season and, according to The Action Network, odds are he’ll be in the running for this year’s NBA Coach of the Year Award:

Being in the running for this honor is nothing new for Stevens, as he has found himself receiving first, second and third place votes for the award seemingly every season. However, despite the fact that he has been linked to to the award for several years now, he has never finished better than third (2017-18) in the illustrious race.

Now reportedly in the running for this year’s ‘CoY’, it’s quite apparent that he is deserving of consideration for the honor. However, in the end, it is not likely that he’ll come away with the Red Auerbach trophy in 2020.

Frankly, the odds are both literally and figuratively stacked against him.

In just his second season as an NBA Head Coach, Nick Nurse is following up his championship season with an equally good regular season as the one his Raptors had the year prior. Coming into 2019-20, many believed Toronto would see a huge falloff with Kawhi Leonard deciding to jump ship and join the Los Angeles Clippers, with some going as far as claiming the team will miss the postseason all together.

Instead, they currently hold the league’s third best record of 40-15, the second best record in the Eastern Conference and Nurse himself was Team Giannis’ Head Coach in this year’s All-Star game.

As for the second place Mike Budenholzer, he is following up his Coach of the Year performance in 2019 with yet another fantastic campaign, coaching his Milwaukee Bucks to a league best record of 46-8 and a league leading NET rating of 11.5.

Despite Brad Stevens’ stupendous coaching, it is hard to imagine him beating out the likes of Nurse and Budenholzer for the role’s highest individual honor this year.

In the end, however, basketball is a team sport. Individual accolades are great, but it takes an entire team to succeed. As the season begins to wind down, the Boston Celtics’ sights should be set on goals that they can achieve as an entire unit.

Is Brad Stevens Coach of the Year worthy? Of course! However, like most other seasons, he will likely fall short of the accolade.

That’s ok though. We don’t need a label for us to know how good of a coach you are Brad!