Way-Too-Soon NBA Coach of the Year Rankings: Is Lakers' JJ Redick Already Elite?
Three weeks into the 2024-25 NBA season, we're getting just enough information to develop an early sense of how head coaches are faring. That's either great news or a disaster, depending on who you are.
We'll leave the coaches facing serious trouble for another time and focus on the ones who've made positive early impacts. All the typical Coach of the Year candidate types are making their cases.
Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Kenny Atkinson has the "new face dramatically improving the new place" corner staked out, while Steve Kerr is the old head proving he can vary his tactics to suit different types of personnel.
We've got revered tacticians, hard-driving motivators and everything in between as we take an early-November look at which coaches are positioning themselves for hardware.
Honorable Mentions
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JJ Redick, Los Angeles Lakers
That 3-0 start seems like it happened six months ago, and the Los Angeles Lakers' outlook is less rosy after a 1-4 road trip brought them back to earth. That said, Redick continues to pull most of the right levers in a pressurized situation. He handled the Bronny James situation as well as any coach could have, correctly empowered Anthony Davis on offense and had the guts to quickly bench D'Angelo Russell when the point guard's effort level dipped.
If Redick can figure out how to get the Lakers' awful transition defense sorted out, he'll make his way into the top five.
Mike Budenholzer, Phoenix Suns
Predictably, Budenholzer has the Suns playing steady and successful on both ends. One of the more reliable regular-season coaches of the last decade deserves credit for turning one of last year's worst clutch teams into one of the best. Even if you don't buy a coach's influence over close-and-late success, everyone is raving about the top-down excellence of the Coach Bud administration.
"The attention to detail is off the charts," Suns president and CEO Josh Bartelstein told Arizona Sports' Bickley & Marotta.
Phoenix won eight of its first nine games, but Budenholzer will be tested anew with Kevin Durant set to miss a couple of weeks with a calf strain.
Ty Lue, LA Clippers
If you told people the Clippers would have anything close to a top-five defense while getting zero combined minutes from Kawhi Leonard (injury) and Paul George (gone in free agency), you would have gotten some strange looks.
That's where Lue has LA through its first few weeks, though, and he's coaxed quality defense out of the roster while also getting away with a throwback attack built on James Harden's heliocentric tendencies. The Clips won six of their first 10 games, thanks to a level of resourcefulness most coaches couldn't match.
5. Jordi Fernandez, Brooklyn Nets
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The Brooklyn Nets weren't supposed to have four wins until, let's say...January?
Instead, what was thought to be one of the worst teams in the league is playing with real life and verve. A lot of the credit for that has to go to Jordi Fernandez, a first-year head coach who has so far cultivated good vibes and competitiveness you just don't see from teams expected to pile up losses in service of a rebuild.
Brooklyn is getting contributions from players most had written off. Ben Simmons still typically refuses to look at the basket on offense, but he was a regular starter who contributed meaningfully as a defender and distributor in the early going. And when the production lagged, Fernandez had the good sense to bench him.
Castoff Ziaire Williams is hitting threes and flashing the athleticism that once made him a prized Memphis Grizzlies prospect. Youngsters Noah Clowney, Jalen Wilson and Keon Johnson have all had moments.
The Nets' schedule toughens up for much of November, and these early four wins don't mean a respectable record (or anything close to it) should be the expectation going forward. But even if Brooklyn starts dropping games en masse and the vibes darken, Fernandez's influence has been positive—in a very difficult situation.
4. Steve Kerr, Golden State Warriors
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It's one thing to win with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green in their primes. It's another to win with a version of Curry who's closer to 40 than 30 and a whole bunch of bench specialists.
That's not to say the 2024-25 Golden State Warriors are destined for a championship, but the team's current success, arrived at through in a completely different manner than its past triumphs, does a lot to recommend Steve Kerr as much more than a "right place, right time" coach who showed up just as dynastic talent peaked.
The Warriors are incredibly deep but lack a second star, and they notably went 3-0 when Curry, their lone luminary, sat out with an ankle sprain. Kerr has this group playing with frenetic defensive energy while running in transition like never before. This is as far from the days of winning on the strength of sheer talent as it gets.
We shouldn't have needed a reminder of Kerr's status as one of the league's elite coaches. Throughout that last decade, he's presided over unmatched success and somehow wrangled exceptionally tough personalities—all while under immense pressure. The Dubs looked like a Play-In team before the season, but Kerr found the right approach for this roster and has his team playing like a top-six squad in the West.
3. Mark Daigneault, Oklahoma City Thunder
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The odds are overwhelmingly stacked against Mark Daigneault winning a second straight Coach of the Year award, as no one has ever gone back-to-back in NBA history.
That's a pretty absurd norm, if you think about it.
If players can win specific awards in streaks, even one as consequential as Most Valuable Player, how is it that no coach has ever secured two COY nods in a row? Was Phil Jackson appreciably worse at his job during the second and third years of his Chicago Bulls' late-90s three-peat than he was in 1995-96? Did Gregg Popovich just forget how to coach for several years at a time during the San Antonio Spurs' two-decade run of success?
Daigneault led an incredibly young roster to 57 wins a season ago, presiding over critical player development and showcasing real tactical acumen on both ends. Odds are, his Thunder are going to win more games than that this time around, and they'll do it under the pressure of real expectations—which adds to the degree of difficulty.
If OKC wins 60-plus games and sustains what are currently among the best defensive numbers of all time, shouldn't that rate as equally—if not more—impressive than what Daigneault did in 2023-24?
2. Joe Mazzulla, Boston Celtics
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If the illogical trends of the past continue and Daigneault's previous win effectively disqualifies him from consideration this year, it'll be good news for Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla.
In addition to leading what looks like the safest championship pick, Mazzulla will also benefit from some retroactive appreciation. Voters could view this season's Coach of the Year honor as a way to reward Mazzulla for winning the title last year. That happened with Nick Nurse in 2019-20 and Steve Kerr in 2015-16, as both coaches won the award after the season in which they collected a championship (and notably did not go all the way a second straight time).
Maybe that precedent will break some ties in Mazzulla's favor, but it's also possible he won't need any extra help.
Boston appears to be an indomitable force, even when playing at less than full strength. The heavy three-point barrage, consistent defense and continued buy-in (sometimes difficult in the post-championship haze) all suggest the Celtics are purposeful, focused on the right things and, above all, deadly serious.
That's exactly how you'd describe Mazzulla's personality and coaching style. If the rest of the Celtics start making straight-faced comments about the nature of hierarchy in the animal kingdom or the royal family, we'll know Mazzulla's influence is total.
1. Kenny Atkinson, Cleveland Cavaliers
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Kenny Atkinson's second crack at a head coaching gig has gone about as well as anyone could have imagined. His Cleveland Cavaliers entered Monday at a perfect 11-0 and are the only team in the league with top-five rankings in both offensive and defensive efficiency.
Evan Mobley is a bigger part of the offense than ever before, perhaps best evidenced by his average touch time (2.53 seconds this year; 1.92 seconds last year) and drives per game (7.9 this year; 4.7 last year).
A huge part of Atkinson winning the Cavs job stemmed from his plan to optimize Mobley on offense, and so far the results have impressed everyone whose opinion matters—not least of all, Mobley himself.
"Everyone's buying into the system with the new offense and getting me the ball, getting me the ball where I need it, and everyone else just playing random basketball with me and helping me play-make for them as well," Mobley told James Herbert of CBS Sports. "It's a lot different, and I like it so far."
Darius Garland is playing with a level of freedom and confidence that makes his injury-riddled 2023-24 feel like a distant memory, reserves like Caris LeVert and Isaac Okoro are fulfilling their roles, and the Cavaliers have soundly established themselves as the biggest threat to the Boston Celtics for the East's No. 1 seed.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate through Nov. 10. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
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