Unless Kenny Atkinson is confident that he is the next Steve Kerr or Gregg Popovich, he probably doesn't want to win Coach of the Year this year for the fine work he is doing coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers.
That isn't to say he shouldn't work hard to deserve the award, continuing to oversee the best team in the NBA and leading them from good to incredible. His tweaks to the offense have done wonders, he is empowering his players, and overall the Cavs are cruising through the season in a way that they just couldn't under previous coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
Coach of the Year isn't all fun and games
Yet what is becoming increasingly clear is that those who win Coach of the Year end up fired within just a few short seasons.
Coach of the Year is a death sent
That's obviously a dash of hyperbole, but not by much. Gregg Popvich and Steve Kerr have both won Coach of the Year and kept their jobs. Otherwise, every winner from the last two decades was fired by their team within five seasons, and the vast majority in just two or three.
Mike Brown became the latest victim of the trophy - to - unemployed pipeline the NBA is running. He was the unanimous Coach of the Year in 2022, and less than two seasons later he was fired despite succeeding more than any Sacramento Kings coach in the last two decades.
Brown was hardly the only such example, however. Monty Williams won the award the year before as he led the Phoenix Suns to 64 wins and the NBA Finals. After just one more season he was unceremoniously cut loose by the Suns, who have cycled through coaches each year since.
On and on it goes. Nick Nurse won in Toronto and made it just a few more seasons before he was fired. His predecessor in Toronto, Dwane Casey, won Coach of the Year after the 2017-18 season and was fired just weeks later after another playoff failure.
Mike Budenholzer won the award with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2018-19 and nearly got fired two years later, except he took the Bucks on a run all the way to the NBA Finals when they won the title. That bought him two more years until he was fired, and the Bucks have been stuck in neutral ever since.
It wasn't the first time Budenholzer won the award, either. He won with the Atlanta Hawks in 2014-15, then the Hawks' win totals descended each season for three consecutive years before he was fired.
On the other end of the spectrum, Erik Spoelstra is widely considered to be one of the very best coaches in basketball but has never won Coach of the Year. Steve Kerr has only won once despite multiple dominant seasons and four titles. Reaching further back, Phil Jackson only won once.
The legacy of winning Coach of the Year is not a good one, in large part because it often goes along with exceeded expectations. A team has a great year, the coach receives a lot of the credit, but then regression to the mean or bad luck or injuries occur and disappointment sets in. That translates to the coach, and soon they are to blame when a team cannot maintain its surprise level of success.
Kenny Atkinson is having a truly inspired season coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers, but part of success is the resetting of expectations. No matter what happens this year, fans will expect the team to match or exceed that level of success next year. The first year is charmed, but the next one is expected.
Those expectations will come whether or not Atkinson wins Coach of the Year. He is probably the frontrunner right now, however, and there is no denying the terrible track record of NBA coaches in the years after winning the award -- and how many of them were fired out of their roles.
It's a bizarre thing to hope for, but Atkinson is on track to finish as the front-runner for the award. Next he will need to help manage expectations in future seasons so that his time in Cleveland is not cut short.
History tell us that if he does win the award, he should probably begin packing.