It’s finally happened. We all now know when the NBA will announce the winner of this season’s Coach of the Year award. The league shared on Wednesday that they’d officially reveal this year’s recipient next Tuesday, May 26.
Coach of the Year will be announced next Tuesday https://t.co/53hG52ibpP pic.twitter.com/0G3xAKlSWs
— Sam LaFrance (@SamLaFranceNBA) May 20, 2026
Amongst the finalists, of course, is Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla. Mazzulla and his staff shined all season long as the “gap year” (they might’ve been right, tbh) Celtics rose far above preseason expectations and won 56 games.
Though he and Detroit Pistons head coach had spent the majority of early 2026 neck and neck in terms of betting odds, Mazzulla has pulled away as the heavy favorite.
At this point, it feels extremely likely that he’ll become the first Celtics coach to win the award since Bill Fitch in 1980.
Now, this would typically be awesome. Who doesn’t like to see their team’s coach take some hardware, right?
The Celtics' brutal playoff collapse takes the glory away from Coach of the Year
Well, yes, just not when that coach bore the brunt of the blame for his team’s 3-1 series collapse in Round 1 of the playoffs.
The public response will generally be ridicule if Mazzulla winds up taking home the hardware -- likely the reason for the announcement coming so late in the spring. It’s insane that Coach of the Year is following, Most Valuable Player, All-Defensive Teams, All-Rookie Teams, and All-NBA Teams.
Coach of the Year is very much an opener of an award, rather than a headliner.
For perspective, last season, Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Kenny Atkinson (who did some great legwork taking heat off of the Celtics’ staff on Tuesday) was announced as the winner on May 5. The year before, Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Mark Daignault was announced the winner on April 28.
The league, and perhaps the Celtics organization if they have a say in all of it, likely wanted to let the first-round humiliation cool off a bit, before putting Mazzulla in the spotlight again. Think of how poorly the 2007 Dirk Nowitzki MVP was perceived after he and the Dallas Mavericks lost to the eighth-seeded Golden State Warriors.
Dirk Nowitzki's reaction to the NBA telling him he was about to win the 2007 MVP award: "Just give it to someone else." A very candid chat with Dirk on the next Headliners, debuting Thursday night on Showtime. Plenty of laughs & great stories from one of the greatest of all time: pic.twitter.com/pyfYxWZzgU
— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) April 19, 2023
A few years back, he told Rachel Nichols on her Headliners podcast that he asked the league to “just give it to someone else,” when they’d let him know he’d won the award.
Joe Mazzulla's reaction to winning Coach of the Year is going to be... something
Mazzulla’s reaction is likely going to be something similar. Boston’s man in charge wasn’t shy about his disdain for the award in the weeks leading up to voting.
"I think it's a stupid award. They shouldn't have it. It's more about the players. It's more about the work that the staff puts in. It's that simple, and I don't ever want to be asked or talk about it again."
He elaborated more during an April availability, minimizing his true impact on the game.
“At the end of the day, I haven’t made one basket all year,” he pointed out last month. “Our staff hasn’t made a basket. We haven’t gotten a block. We haven’t ran back on defense. We didn’t play in a back-to-back. We didn’t have to play hurt. We haven’t really done s---. So, if you don’t have the guys to be able to put you in position, it doesn’t really matter. I’m just grateful. The greatest gift I have is I get to coach a bunch of guys that care about winning and being a part of the culture that we have.”
His seemingly inevitable acceptance speech is going to be one for the ages.
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