Boston Celtics: Frank Vogel endorses Brad Stevens for NBA Coach of the Year

Boston Celtics Head Coach Brad Stevens gets endorsement from a prominent peer to win the 2019-20 NBA Coach of the Year award.

As we venture towards the resumption of the 2019-20 NBA regular season, so too do we inch closer to awards season. Though members of the Boston Celtics recently received little love in Yahoo Sports’ latest odds for the league’s most prestigious honors, there might still be hope for the shamrocks to come out of the season with some hardware, Larry O’Brien trophy or not.

In a recent article posted by ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, Los Angeles Lakers Head Coach Frank Vogel — one of this year’s top contenders to take home the NBA Coach of the Year award — discussed in-depth how he believes this year’s awards season should playout and, to no one’s surprise, lobbied for his two most prominent players (LeBron James & Anthony Davis) to take home two of the sport’s highest individual honors.

"“Nobody impacts winning more than LeBron James. I do believe that he should be the MVP this year,” Vogel said. “I believe he should be the MVP and I believe Anthony Davis should be the Defensive Player of the Year. I hope those awards go to our two players.”"

Later on, he was asked who he would vote for to be named the NBA’s Coach of the Year, should he not be able to vote for himself, and named a man who, simply put, has been wildly underappreciated by analysts throughout the entire association.

That coach: Brad Stevens.

"“I think so many people have done great jobs,” he said. “Obviously coach Bud (Mike Budenholzer) and coach (Nick) Nurse out east, doing what they’ve done has been very impressive,” Vogel said. “‘Billy the Kid’ (Billy Donovan) in OKC — with a team that didn’t necessarily have high expectations — has done a great job. Taylor Jenkins has done a great job in Memphis.But why don’t I give it to my former Indiana buddy Brad Stevens for doing a great job losing Kyrie Irving and a few others? Al Horford changing the whole identity of their team and having a great season. I would probably vote for Brad.”"

Frankly, we couldn’t agree more with Vogel’s endorsement of Stevens for Coach of the Year; after all, we’ve been preaching this sentiment that he’s deserving of consideration for quite some time now.

After an offseason that saw the magnitude of roster turnover that the Boston Celtics endured, it was hard to believe that the team would be able to produce at the level they’ve become accustomed to over the past several seasons.

However, thanks in large to Stevens’ leadership, playcalling, and development skills, by the time of the season’s suspension on March 11th, Boston found themselves on pace to surpass their record from the previous season, boasting a 2019-20 record of 43-21, good enough for third in the Eastern Conference, and fifth in the entire association.

Throughout his tenure in the NBA, Stevens has etched himself soundly into the conversation of one of the game’s best coaches. Guiding the shamrocks to the playoffs in all but one of his seasons in Boston, Stevens has found himself in the running for Coach of the Year honors seemingly every campaign, yet has never finished better than third (2017-18) in the polls.

As we said in one of our previous articles about this exact topic, the odds of Boston’s head man coming away with the award over some of the other highly touted coaches this season are not exactly in his favor:

(**Records have changed since this piece was published, as it was written over five months ago**)

"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."

Though it’s a long shot that he’ll win the illustrious award, Brad Stevens deserves his praise.

An endorsement for Coach of the Year by one of 2020’s leading candidates is certainly nothing to scoff at for the head honcho of the Boston Celtics.