In Fickle, Unforgiving World of NBA Coaches, Those Who Endure Deserve the Honors
Had Rajon Rondo never gone down to Dallas, perhaps we'd be talking about Rick Carlisle as the 2015 NBA Coach of the Year right now.
Things were going that well for the Mavericks, who were moving neatly along that overachieving story arc that we in the media like when we vote for the award (won by Atlanta's Mike Budenholzer on Tuesday). It turns out that Rondo arrived in a trade and made the Mavericks worse for various reasons; their 111-99 Game 2 loss in Houston on Tuesday was the low point, as Rondo went from inconsistent to invisible. Now he's sidelined indefinitely, according to ESPN's Marc Stein.
The context on coaching work shifts quickly, which is why Scott Brooks was the NBA Coach of the Year in 2010 and is now out of Oklahoma City, as the team announced Wednesday. In fact, only one of the winners from 2004 to 2010 is still an NBA head coach. Winning the award never says as much about a coach as does his greater body of work.
Coaches are constantly being evaluated and re-evaluated because they're constantly being challenged by new personalities. Maximizing talent, no matter the packaging, is the job profile.
Carlisle is one of the best in the business. He's highly regarded inside NBA circles as a fundamentally superior strategist and manager. He was the NBA Coach of the Year in 2002 in Detroit and won the NBA championship nearly a decade later in Dallas.
It has been a devilish struggle to get Rondo in sync with the Mavericks' group. And because we tend to dwell on what didn't go right, we've spent far more time covering Rondo's awkward fit than how beautifully Carlisle worked now-injured Chandler Parsons immediately into Dallas' flow this season.
The point is that Parsons is one thing and Rondo is another, which is why the only way to judge the quality of coaches is to wait and see how well they handle the unique problems and personalities that arise over longer hauls.
There is only one individual honor for NBA coaches, and we in the media don’t vote on it with the respect the award deserves. Yes, the fact that it's "Coach of the Year" means it is a transient honor, but we really should take into better account who are really, truly and fundamentally the proven best coaches in the business.
At least with the MVP award we know that the very best players in the league are the only ones we can consider, not potential one-hit wonders. But especially with the coaching award, it's easy to fall for the overachieving story arc—which is why we can look back at the seven guys who were Coach of the Year from 2004 through 2010 and see six guys who are no longer NBA head coaches and Byron Scott, whose talent-poor team just posted the worst finish in the Lakers' 67-year history. (The winners from '04-'10: Hubie Brown, Mike D'Antoni, Sam Mitchell, Avery Johnson, Scott, Mike Brown and Brooks.)
Before George Karl was named Coach of the Year in 2013, he cited the peculiar nature of the award to Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post, asking: "Have you seen what happens to guys who win Coach of the Year?"
Too often we vote on whose team had a surprisingly nice season as opposed to using a sound logical perspective such as: "Gregg Popovich taught both Mike Budenholzer and Steve Kerr most of what they know, so it's pretty safe to say Popovich is a lot better coach than his disciples right now."
(We used to vote from the illogical perspective that "Phil Jackson's star players are just too good, to vote for him," even with so much gold-plated evidence to the contrary. Jackson has won NBA Coach of the Year only one time, 1996.)
Budenholzer's four rings came as an assistant coach under Popovich, and Kerr won two titles as a player under Popovich. Obviously, none of that happened this season, when Budenholzer in Atlanta and Kerr with Golden State coached their teams to the top of the respective conference standings.
My official NBA ballot, as plenty of Atlanta fans have noticed with substantial outrage, was the only among the 130 submitted not to place Budenholzer in the top three. I voted for Popovich, Kerr and Boston's Brad Stevens, in that order—believing Popovich was outstanding this season in fighting San Antonio's expected letdown combined with multiple injuries and adjustments, even if he wasn't as blatantly ahead of the game as he has proved so often in so many ways.
Kerr took a team with the same players as last season to truly historic heights, and Stevens took a team with mostly players the casual fan has never heard of (plus dealing with an out-going Rondo early on) to the playoffs.
This isn't about what Budenholzer (or Houston's Kevin McHale or Utah's Quin Snyder or Milwaukee's Jason Kidd or Chicago's Tom Thibodeau or Indiana's Frank Vogel) didn't do. The Hawks were absolutely well-coached in a breakthrough season, and the best thing about this award is that it gets us thinking positively about all the good things a variety of coaches accomplished.
We are utterly transfixed by Carlisle and Rondo becoming the train wreck that they were Tuesday in Houston. That is the norm.
(Oh, and by the way, the Rockets won Tuesday because McHale had his crew humming along with James Harden on the bench—and with mercurial Josh Smith passing like a Rondo—in the fourth quarter. And the Rockets had home-court advantage for that game because McHale had his crew humming along without Dwight Howard much of the season. Here's where someone from Orlando or Detroit points out the negative that Stan Van Gundy, another superior coach, couldn't keep control over Smith or Howard…)
The nature of the job is to take this player and that player and coach them differently but successfully toward the greater good and establish a strong community.
Then do it again with some other people next season, sticking to what you believe in while being eager to grow and adjust. Repeat it often enough, you might actually have a sliver of job security.
Kerr, the rookie, even hinted at that staying power himself, noting that Budenholzer has been working at his craft as an NBA coach for 20-some years.
"I just got into this gig, and it would have felt really weird to win that award," Kerr told reporters in Oakland.
Well, the gauge of this job being well-done has never been that award anyway.
If you're good at it, you have a shot at sticking around.
If not, everyone will know soon enough.
Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.
