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The New York Knicks are on the brink of elimination.
That, of course, has caused much chatter from the team, with plenty of talk about who deserves blame for the team’s demise.
Tyson Chandler somewhat started it all when he said the team wasn’t playing team basketball. Confronted by Carmelo Anthony about the statement, the center had to clarify his statement, from Al Iannazzone of Newsday:
Mark Jackson is the coach of the Golden State Warriors. If you ask him, though, he will probably tell you that he is, first and foremost, a pastor.
Generally speaking, Jackson is a good man. He respects all of his players and treats them as equals. He would never speak ill towards any of them and never utters a curse word – not easy to do when you’re involved with the game of basketball.
What goes into winning the prestigious NBA Coach of the Year award?
Do you have to have the best record in the league? Do you have to defy the preseason odds of your team not making the playoffs? Must you overcome the absence of injured star players? Like most awards in the NBA, there are no standard guidelines as to why someone deserves votes moreso than others, and this makes it rather difficult for the writers to determine who the very best ought to be.
It was announced early Wednesday that Denver Nuggets coach George Karl would be the recipient of the elusive award for the 2012-2013 season. Is he deserving? Absolutely. It’s hard to believe that Karl has never won the award in his 25 years as a coach, and he did quite a job in leading his team to 57 wins – third best in the talent-heavy Western Conference.
That said, were there others that were just as deserving of the award, if not more? The answer has to be a yes, although again, no one has set any rules to justify any of it.
The NBA’s active wins leader among head coaches, having accumulated 1,131 career victories, has now been honored with his first piece of hardware for individual achievement.
Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl was honored Wednesday as the 2012-13 NBA Coach of the Year.
George Karl with the Red Auerbach Trophy.
Coach Karl led the Nuggets to the league’s fourth best record (57-25), the third seed in the Western Conference and an impressive league-best 38-3 record at home.
That’s a tall order for a team lacking a legitimate superstar that also sported the league’s third youngest roster.
Karl beat out a slew of other equally qualified candidates for the award, finishing first with 62 first-place votes ahead of the Miami Heat’s Eric Spoelstra, New York Knicks’ Mike Woodson and last year’s winner, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.
[Surprisingly, Scott Brooks, head coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder—who finished the season with the second best record and the top seed in the Western Conference—finished last in voting, receiving only three 3rd-place votes.]
After a 30 year career (25 in the NBA) as a basketball head coach, it only seems fitting that he won the Red Auerbach Trophy with the Denver Nuggets, considering he began coaching with the short-lived Montana Golden Nuggets in the Continental Basketball Association—where he won the coach of the year honors twice en route to two CBA finals appearances.
Two years removed from missing the second half of the season while overcoming cancer, he has now had his best regular season with the Nuggets. It is, however, not without its critics. While Denver has been to the playoffs each season that he has been there (nine in all), they have failed to make it out of the first-round eight times, including the last four straight seasons.
From the CBA to the NBA, Karl has had plenty of success but he has yet to win a championship. Thus far, he has only been to the NBA Finals once, having done so with the Seattle SuperSonics who lost in six games to the Chicago Bulls in 1996.
With the league being full of power teams, a championship in the immediate future looks fairly bleak, but anything is possible, especially for a coach capable of such a high level of sustained success, assuming he’s able to exercise his first-round demons.
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When I cast my Coach of the Year vote for George Karl, I had no idea so many others would do the same.
More than half the voters made the same choice.
The final individual award given out by the NBA was announced this morning, and Karl was the Coach of the Year in a runaway. with Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat second and Mike Woodson of the Knicks third.
