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Here is a look at the 30 current NBA coaches (well, 29 - sorry Nate), their rankings this year and their rankings in the past 4 years:


Here is a ranking of the value of coaches by team over the past 4 years:

Thanks for doing this! It's fun to talk coaches and this is a great format for that.

Some of the trends seem to be:
Taylor Jenkins' rapid and consistent ascent (I don't think he's gotten better, what he's been doing has just become more recognized).
Nick Nurse's slow and consistent descent (5th is still pretty nice)
Dwane Casey's slow and consistent descent (age and lack of playoff success).
That surprising Monty Williams bump for a year.

As far as teams go, I'm impressed with the consistency in coaching the Utah Jazz have been able to keep up (outside of the Ty Corbin era). On the other end of the spectrum, the Wizards are consistently blah at the coaching position, aren't they? Hopefully Unseld Jr. can show something or they can knock their next hire out of the park. Washington and Orlando are the only two teams whose coaches haven't scratched the top 20 in these four years.

Surprised to see Ty Lue so low. The media and many on here always proclaim him to be a top 5 coach in the league.

Thank you, ElectricMayhem, for running this poll. Appreciate the work you've put in, it greatly contributes to meaningful basketball discussion.

Love seeing the over the years breakdown.

Still don't think Kidd moving up this season was warranted, I just called him a poor man's Scott Skiles in another thread, but hey there's so many coaches it's impossible to watch enough games to get a good feel for all of them

MrGoat wrote:Love seeing the over the years breakdown.

Still don't think Kidd moving up this season was warranted, I just called him a poor man's Scott Skiles in another thread, but hey there's so many coaches it's impossible to watch enough games to get a good feel for all of them

Moving up doesn't necessarily mean people think he improved. Other coaches reputations changing will directly impact the standings even if we have no new information on the guy.

Kidd did help the Mavs to a surprise WCF appearance. When this poll was done last year, Kidd didn't have many positives on his resume. Then Dallas grew into a legit defense and won their first two playoff series of the Luka era. The Mavs struggling this year, and Kidd's occasional media blunders have halted his rising star and opened him up to criticism such as being called "a poor man's Scott Skiles". But Kidd being 19th, when you look at the coaches below him... is hardly a good accomplishment. I think could have gone higher, and I'm not a big fan of his coaching. I actually like some of his offensive and defensive principles this year, but I don't think he's been utilizing personnel well or "pushing the right buttons".

Regardless of Kidd, the Mavs are going to be a bad defense and a good offense for the rest of the year I think. Kidd came out of Vogel's coaching staff last year and showed an inability to incorporate a lot of those defensive strategies. He no longer has the roster to do that with DFS gone and Maxi still injured. This team has acquired its second star but now faces the uphill battle of building out a supporting cast, and this year's isn't it.

I thought Spo was a byproduct of LeBron, was I ever wrong, he's become one of the leagues great coaches.

Reeko wrote:Surprised to see Ty Lue so low. The media and many on here always proclaim him to be a top 5 coach in the league.

It's, I suppose, a reflection of the fact that he's been doing quite poorly this season. Yeah, the Clippers have won a bunch to be in playoff picture, but check their record against winning teams, it's abysmal. The games where they beat other teams it's on talent advantage, mostly iso action, team's play especially compared to prior seasons is severely lacking fluidity. It appears as if the team's tuned Ty out.

Dan33185 wrote:I thought Spo was a byproduct of LeBron, was I ever wrong, he's become one of the leagues great coaches.

Most people at the time definitely underestimated the difficulty of creating a viable team out of three ball-dominant superstars. Unlike KG-Allen-Pierce they were not a natural fit at all.