Kings coach Mike Brown has been voted the National Basketball Coaches Association’s Coach of the Year, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports.
It’s no surprise, considering Sacramento just ended the longest playoff drought among the four major sports leagues. The Kings went 48-34 in Brown’s first season as their head coach and will enter the postseason as the Western Conference’s No. 3 seed.
The Bucks’ Mike Budenholzer, Thunder‘s Mark Daigneault, Celtics‘ Joe Mazzulla and Knicks‘ Tom Thibodeau also received votes, per Wojnarowski.
This award, introduced in 2017 and named after longtime NBCA executive director Michael H. Goldberg, is voted on by the NBA’s 30 head coaches, none of whom can vote for himself. However, it isn’t the NBA’s official Coach of the Year award, which is voted on by media members and is represented by the Red Auerbach Trophy. The winner of that award will be announced later in the year.
The Suns’ Monty Williams had received the award in each of the last two seasons.
Brown was hired by the Kings after six-year stint as an assistant coach with the Warriors.
Rigged but whatever
Brown should win the real one too. Great coaching jobs aren’t really about a single season, but it’s a single season award. Bigger picture, SAC’s GM deserves the credit for bringing in Sabonis admist the 2k’er angst. But this season, no HC (even Thibs) did as good a job of leveraging the talent on his roster to the cause of winning than Brown. Not sure what else a HC has to prove to get this award.
How about Joe Mazulla and the turmoil? Celtics fought for that number one spot now look at them. But everyone hates Boston.
He took over a finals team. All he had to was not break it. The turmoil was upstairs.
Mazulla gets the Steve Kerr treatment for sure. You don’t earn credit for a good team if all you did is take it over and not screw it up. (except Kerr got all the credit that Marc Jackson should’ve received)
Okay well how about how he handled the udoka situation? Things could have easily fallen apart. Mavericks were good last year. So we’re heat? It’s not easy. Whatever though media hates Boston not much to see here. Kerr deserves some votes too yes.
Handled it how? He was an assistant who got elevated into the position. Nothing really for the players to adjust to…or the coach to ‘handle’.
Mazulla, and others (Vaughn, Ham, etc.), deserve something for navigating through peripheral matters while coaching. NBA HC’s must do many things other than coaching, and I wouldn’t argue with someone believing the award should account for those. It probably should, to a degree. But where, as here, a candidate demonstrates excellence though the pure art of coaching, I’d prefer to award him. Note that this is NOT a media award. This is voted on by the (other) coaches. They are more likely to be of like mind with me on this. Maybe the writers (the real award) will take up Mazzulla’s case. Of course, they’re the ones that will hate one city vs another, more so than the coaches.
Fair point @ dxc
Class act
Beam!!
Personally my vote would be for
Taylor J
But I’m not a voter
Who won the NBCA:
WORST COACH OF THE YEAR AWARD??
Joseph “jo” Mama
The KINGS front office should get more of the credit …… got Huerter, Monk, drafted Keegan (not Ivey) .
More shooting made the game a lot easier for both Fox and Sabonis.
Mike Brown’s calling card is defense, yet KINGS among the worst in defensive rating this year.
Jenkins, Mazzulla, Malone would have been better choices.
Mike’s calling card absolutely is not defense… that’s the media’s calling card for Mike Brown. Mention that to him and he’ll jump all over you telling you how efficient his offense was as a head coach.
Have literally heard him make this point several times.
It’s media’s label on him, because he was identified as the defensive coordinator of the WARRIORS, for the time that he was there ……. Draymond specifically, has mentioned Brown’s call for defense more than a few times in the past.
Kudos to Brown though, for giving the keys to the players, mainly Fox, letting them run and shoot.