Mike Budenholzer, who led the Atlanta Hawks to a franchise-record 60 wins this season, has been named the NBA’s coach of the year, the league announced Tuesday.
Budenholzer received 67 first-place votes and a total of 513 points from a nationwide panel of sportswriters to beat out Golden State’s Steve Kerr for the award.
Atlanta won the Southeast Division and earned the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
The Hawks had a 19-game winning streak during the season, including a perfect 17-0 record in the month of January, which helped a team-record four Hawks make the all-star game. The Hawks ran away and hid from the rest of the East, finishing a full seven games ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the race for the No. 1 overall seed in the conference and earning home-court advantage throughout the Eastern playoffs.
They share the ball, finishing second in the league in assists, assist ratio and points created by assist; third in secondary assists and assist opportunities per game; and fifth in passes per game. They scorch the net from long distance, ranking fourth in percentage of total points generated from 3-point land, and second in team accuracy beyond the arc, led by Korver's NBA-best 49.2 percent mark. They hung together on both ends of the floor, ranking sixth in the NBA in points scored per possession and seventh in points allowed per possession, making the Hawks one of four teams to rank in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency, along with Kerr's Warriors, Popovich's Spurs and Terry Stotts' Portland Trail Blazers. Budenholzer got the collective effort necessary to produce such stalwart two-way work; his players rave about him, praising his ability to walk the line between tactician and team leader without being viewed as a harsh taskmaster. Had the voting gone Kerr's way, in recognition of his work in pushing all the right buttons to elevate the Warriors from a very good 50-win team under Mark Jackson into the ranks of the all-time elite regular-season teams in NBA history, we wouldn't have batted an eye. But this season has been nothing short of a resurrection for the Hawks, and Budenholzer deserves his fair share of the credit for raising the Hawks to heretofore unmatched heights.
They share the ball, finishing second in the league in assists, assist ratio and points created by assist; third in secondary assists and assist opportunities per game; and fifth in passes per game. They scorch the net from long distance, ranking fourth in percentage of total points generated from 3-point land, and second in team accuracy beyond the arc, led by Korver's NBA-best 49.2 percent mark. They hung together on both ends of the floor, ranking sixth in the NBA in points scored per possession and seventh in points allowed per possession, making the Hawks one of four teams to rank in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency, along with Kerr's Warriors, Popovich's Spurs and Terry Stotts' Portland Trail Blazers. Budenholzer got the collective effort necessary to produce such stalwart two-way work; his players rave about him, praising his ability to walk the line between tactician and team leader without being viewed as a harsh taskmaster. Had the voting gone Kerr's way, in recognition of his work in pushing all the right buttons to elevate the Warriors from a very good 50-win team under Mark Jackson into the ranks of the all-time elite regular-season teams in NBA history, we wouldn't have batted an eye. But this season has been nothing short of a resurrection for the Hawks, and Budenholzer deserves his fair share of the credit for raising the Hawks to heretofore unmatched heights.
No comments:
Post a Comment