Brad Stevens: Coach of the Year?

[Ogaju]

he has my vote.

[PhoSita]

I'd give it to Pop, but he deserves it every year if you ask me.

[Who]

D'Antoni is my choice for Coach of the Year.

His work in Houston has been absolutely incredible. He has taken a mediocre team and lifted them up into contender status.

He is a strange coach. Someone with extreme strengths and extreme weaknesses but when you give him a roster whose strengths fit his own strengths as a coach ... D'Antoni can accomplish some truly special things and he has done that this year with that Rockets team.

I think most coaches in the league would have struggled to get to 50 wins with that roster. Nevermind 55.

And what D'Antoni has done with Harden = tremendous.

[RockinRyA]

Our GM should be fired. Our "all-star" is a false star and a bench player at best. Horford is lazy and a bad acquisition. Marcus Smart is trash. AB is injury-prone. Jaylen Brown was a reach. Our Coach is not even in the top three of COTY.

Based from the fans posts, I wonder how we got 53 wins.

[gift]

Annual awards tend to discount perennial contenders (Pop for coach of the year, Lebron for MVP etc.)

It helps to have lower expectations and then have one really good, unexpected year.

[action781]

And I'll admit to being a homer, but how many people thought Stevens would take the Celtics even to the No. 2 seed this season, much less the No. 1 seed?

It's not so much the seed as the wins total. Would people predict 52 or 53 wins, after 48 last year? Vegas had us at 51.5, #2 in the East, so my guess is yes.

If COTY is "which team overachieved the most", then I don't think it's Stevens.

Good point—I didn't realize how Vegas had placed us. I still think that, compared to all other top teams in both conferences, Brad has done the most with the least amount of raw talent.

He's done a great job. But how much better did he do than Quindell Snyder, for instance? That's a similarly flawed team that added 10+ wins to its total. 50 wins in the West is probably more impressive than 53 in the East.

I think one of the barriers for Stevens is his own track record. Getting this team to 53 wins seems in line with expectations, but that's only because he got a 25 win team to 40 wins two seasons ago (when he should have won COTY), and 48 last season.

Quindell? 

Auto-correct.

So you frequently use the word "Quindell"?