Another Forthcoming NBA Coach of the Year Snub

The National Basketball Association has concluded roughly one-third of the 2009-10 season, and writers all over the country are beginning to put together their lists and leading candidates for postseason awards. The usual suspects are at the top of the lists for Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year and sadly, Coach of the Year. Sadly because the usual suspects are getting consideration, and because of the one glaring omission that seems to always exist: Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

Currently, the Los Angeles Lakers have the best record in basketball, and have had it throughout much of the season. The Lakers have had to deal with two separate injuries to Pau Gasol, the concussion, and absence from five games of Ron Artest, and the continuous injury to Luke Walton, the second longest tenured player on the team, which has kept him out since game nine. Through all of this, the Lakers have had three winning streaks of longer than five games, and have only lost two games in a row on one occasion. Despite this, writers across the country feel that there are at least five coaches doing better jobs this season than Phil is.

Phil Jackson is stigmatized by the same type of thinking that plagued Pat Riley during his years as coach of the Lakers. Just as there are baseball Hall of Fame voters who do not believe that there should ever be a first-ballot or unanimous Hall of Fame selection, there are basketball award voters who feel that no coach who has more than one future Hall of Fame player, or arguably the league´s best player on their squad, works hard enough to be considered having done the best coaching job for a given season.

The only season in which Pat Riley won Coach of the Year as coach of the Lakers was the season immediately following the retirement of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, when the Lakers secured the best record in the league with Vlade Divac in the pivot. Phil´s only award ever was the 1995-96 season when, after his stint in baseball, Jordan returned for his first full season, and the Bulls eclipsed the Lakers´ 27-year record of 69 wins and finished the season with a 72-10 record. This came after a season-and-a-half where Scottie Pippen was the number one option and it was determined that Pippen might not actually be as great a player as he was perceived when he played alongside Jordan. Once Jordan returned, it appeared that the Bulls only possessed one Hall of Fame player, so it was not a problem to give Jackson the award.

Jackson´s, and to a lesser extent, Riley´s failure to win the award, though Riley would win once each with the Knicks and the Heat, stems from the question of whether it is a better coaching job to derive success from a team of journeymen with possibly one future Hall of Fame player, or from a team where there are two or more future Hall of Famers. Apparently, the voters feel that it is a better coaching job getting journeymen and marginal players to play above their heads than it is in getting superstars to check their egos, and their desire to have the ball and take all of the shots, for the good of the team. Some would disagree because having two or three players who all want to take the last shot, and getting them to buy into a team-oriented structure, would seem to be more challenging, but obviously not enough to get men like Jackson, Riley, Doc Rivers and others who have coached talented teams voted NBA Coach of the Year.

So another season is underway, and during this season, basketball writers will compile their lists of possible candidates for postseason awards, and as usual, despite their injury problems and overwhelming success, Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson will not be considered for NBA Coach of the Year, even though the team is the best in the league, which means that he must be doing something right.