Fabulous foursome: Who deserves NBA Coach of the Year?

The 2024-25 NBA regular season is three-fourths of the way complete, and, surprisingly, most of the awards races are either wrapped up or lackluster. 

Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander appears to have a slight lead over Denver's Nikola Jokic in the MVP race with no other contender in sight. The Defensive Player of the Year award will have an asterisk because San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama is ineligible. 

Meanwhile, San Antonio's Stephon Castle will win Rookie of the Year in a bland draft class. 2021 No. 1 overall pick Cade Cunningham of Detroit is running away with the Most Improved Player award. And Boston's Payton Pritchard is going to win an uninspiring Sixth Man of the Year award. (Let’s hope this doesn’t inspire Bill Simmons to add a bonus episode of "Celtic City.")

But wait! The Coach of the Year award — typically an afterthought in the awards race — is really fun this season with the following excellent candidates. (Records are through Tuesday's games.)

The Fixer: Kenny Atkinson | Cleveland Cavaliers (55-10)

The Cavs were pretty good the past two seasons under J.B. Bickerstaff, but Atkinson took essentially the same team and made it great. Historically great. 

Previous Cleveland teams were built around the same core four: guards Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland and power forward Evan Mobley and center Jarrett Allen. They were great at defense but couldn’t figure how to balance touches for the two guards or how to space the floor with the two big men. 

Atkinson fixed those issues immediately, unleashing them into the league’s best offense this season and second-best offense in NBA history (122.7 points per 100 possessions). And he’s managed to do that without hampering the defense (sixth-best defensive rating). 

Cleveland has the seventh-best net rating per 100 possessions in NBA history. All this has the Cavs looking like a clear contender for the title and possibly the favorite to win it all. 

The Castoff: J.B. Bickerstaff | Detroit Pistons (37-29)

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Bickerstaff, the guy who couldn’t get the Cavs over the hump, is still one of the league’s best coaches, and he has the Pistons battling admirably for the four-seed in the Eastern Conference. This comes one season after the team lost an NBA-record 28 straight games on its way to the league’s worst record (14-68). Now, they’re on pace for a 30-plus win improvement over last season. What a turnaround!

The Podcaster: JJ Redick | Los Angeles Lakers (40-23)

Redick, a revelation for the Lakers, is in the running for the best first-time head coach with no prior coaching experience in NBA history (Golden State's Steve Kerr being the other who stands out). 

In his first season at the helm of the league's most talked about and scrutinized team, he’s a steadying figure amid a season of chaos. That includes losing his home in the California fires and then having his roster totally and unexpectedly upended with the Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis trade. 

Despite the constant lineup flux, he has the Lake Show playing its best basketball during the second half of the season — the team is 21-9 since the start of the new year despite dealing with injuries to Davis, Doncic and LeBron James. If the Lakers finish with a top-three seed in the Western Conference, he’ll deserve a lot of Coach of the Year votes.

The reigning Coach of the Year: Mark Daigneault | Oklahoma City Thunder (53-12)

Fun fact: No coach in NBA history has won this award two years in a row. Well, that should probably change because Daigneault deserves the award again this season. In 2024-25, he has the Thunder doing even more absurd things.

For instance, the Thunder have the best defensive rating in the NBA (106.1 points allowed per 100 possessions). But that’s not the most impressive part — the gap between the Thunder and team with the second-best defensive rating (3.3 points) is as wide as the gap between the second-best defensive team and the 13th-best defensive team. 

Oh, and remember how the Cavs had the seventh-best net rating in NBA history? Well, the Thunder have the second best in NBA history (plus-12.6 points per 100 possessions), with a chance at catching Michael Jordan’s 72-10 Bulls team (plus-13.4).

If you’re the coach of the team that is within shouting distance of the best net rating in NBA history, you deserve the Coach of the Year award.

The pick: Daigneault