As of the time I'm writing this, most of the awards for the 2012 NBA season have already been given out. I wanted to give my opinions for the awards before they were handed out, but unfortunately, I just never got around to it. The MVP and ROY are the only awards left to be handed out, so I'll give my thoughts on that, but I'll also take a lot back to see where I think the voters went wrong, and where they went right.
Coach of the Year
Official Results: 1) Gregg Popovich, 2) Tom Thibodeau, 3) Frank Vogel
How I Would've Voted: 1) Gregg Popovich, 2) Tom Thibodeau, 3) Tyrone Corbin
I'm a huge Phil Jackson, so every year I always try to find a way to get him into my top-3 for COY. Now that he's retired, I was actually able to work on my Coach of the Year ballot with a little less bias then I usually do.
I got to be completely honest. I hate the Coach of the Year Award. I may be being a little bit extreme, but I just find it a little bit pointless. For instance, I think we can all agree that Phil Jackson is the greatest coach in NBA history, and yet he only snagged on COY, and it took a record breaking season for him to do that! Jerry Sloan is one of the most respected coaches ever, and he never managed to win the award in his 20+ year career. Also, take a look at what's happened to some of the coaches who have won the award in recent years.
2005: Mike D'Antonio (PHX)-After leaving Phoenix in 2008, had only one winning season in four years with New York.
2006: Avery Johnson (DAL)-Fired two years later after a first round defeat in back-to-back years.
2007: Sam Mitchell (TOR)-Fired 17 team games into the 2008-09 season after the Raptors started 8-9.
2008: Byron Scott (NOH)-Fired 9 games into the 2009-10 season after New Orleans started 3-6.
2009: Mike Brown (CLE)-Fired after the very next season after Cleveland failed to make the Finals for the second straight year.
For me, I just don't see the Coach of the Year Award as doing much good...except for having been an omen for a future pink slip.
Anyways, I think it's best to actually start discussing the results of the 2012 COY voting. I feel it's never that easy to select who did the best job coaching in a particular year, because it all depends on the criteria of the voter. As kind of a guideline to help me, I narrowed the candidates for Coach of the Year based on three criteria: 1) Did their team have a winning record, 2) Did their team have a better winning percentage than the year before, and 3) Did their team surpass preseason expectations? (I made season projections for every team before the year started)
Now of course, those guidelines are far from perfect. There's only so much a team can do if a team is completely devoid of talent, free agency can always effect how a team does from one season to another more than a coach can, and injuries, suspensions, and other events of adversity can always mess with a team during the season. However, for this particularly season, there were six coaches that met my criteria, and I think all of them were legitimate candidates. They were Tom Thibodeau, Frank Vogel, Larry Drew, Gregg Popovich, Lionel Hollins, and Tyrone Corbin.
With my list of nominees narrowed down, I had to ask myself an important question: Of those coaches, which ones actually played a big role in their team exceeding their expectation? In other words, which one do I think isn't going to be looking for a new job in a couple years because their team got off to a bad start. This kind of becomes a question of legitimacy. Which coach actually shaped and molded their teams to what they are, rather than just ride the coattails of great player addition or improvement? Of course, of the six coaches I listed, Gregg Popovich is the one we all know has proven himself to be a great leader. Therefore, he was my pick for a safe Coach of the Year. The voters and I each had Thibodeau as second, but we differed for third. I went with Corbin because I had expected Utah to be in the basement of the west, but I have no problem with Frank Vogel being third at all.
Defensive Player of the Year
Official Results: 1) Tyson Chandler, 2) Serge Ibaka, 3) Dwight Howard
How I Would've Voted: 1) Dwight Howard, 2) Tyson Chandler, 3) Serge Ibaka
I think one thing I can take from this is that with me, there is a consensus among who the top three defensive players are in the NBA. The only question is how are they ordered. For me, it really came down to Tyson Chandler and Dwight Howard.
Why Tyson Chandler? With the injuries and offensive woes the Knicks have dealt with the entire year, the only reason they managed to stay afloat was because of their defense. Their defense?!?! Believe it or not, New York actually was the fifth best defensive team in the entire NBA during the 2012 season. With the addition of Chandler, a team that had spent the last years as one of the worst teams at stopping their opponents from scoring all of the sudden became one of the best. Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire weren't able to complete their roles as the offensive forces, but Chandler did his one the other end of the basket.
Why Dwight Howard? Of course stats aren't everything, but they do mean something. With that said, Howard averaged the most rebounds per game of anybody in the league, and was one of the NBA's best shot-blocker. While Orlando did drop from being a top-3 defensive team each of the past three seasons to being 12th this season, it wouldn't be fair to pin the blame on Howard, since defense is very much a team thing. Anyways, Howard EASILY won the DPOY award in each of the last three years, so even if he wasn't as good defensively as he's been in the past, I still think he'd be the best.
I think we have to ask ourselves that if we could pick anyone in the NBA to anchor our defense, who would it be, most of us would say Howard. I think after three straight years of Howard easily winning the award, people were looking for change. It's really important not to have voter fatigue and not vote for someone just because we're tired of seeing the same reason. I kind of felt that's what people may have done. Howard's attitude throughout the entire season also didn't help the cause. One thing that pushed me in Howard's favor was this: according the 82games.com, the New York Knicks, per 48 minutes, gave up 1.2 less points when Chandler was on the court than when he was off it. How about Howard? A whopping 6.8 less!
As for Ibaka, I hope people don't think that I refused to recognize his talents just because he plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder. He is an amazing defender and his shot blocking numbers this year were unmatched. However, the correlation that exists between shot blocking and winning, according to my research, is almost non-existent. Aside from shot blocking, Ibaka really hasn't made a name for himself defensively in the same way Howard and Chandler have.
Most Improved Player
Official Results: 1) Ryan Anderson, 2) Ersan Ilyasova, 3) Nikola Pekovic
How I Would've Voted: 1) Nikola Pekovic, 2) Jeremy Lin, 3) Ersan Ilyasova
I think that the Most Improved Player Award is easily the most difficult one to pick. Its' really difficult to compare the improvement of one player to another, how much a player has improved, and whether a player actually improved or were just given a chance. I think evidence of the challenge of picking an MIP winner can be seen in the fact that 6 different players got at least 10 first place votes, and 19 (!!!) players got at least one first place vote.
First of all, let me explain why I think Ryan Anderson should not have even been considered for MIP. To put it simply, he didn't really improve. Sure, his numbers all went up and he was in All-Star consideration, but this was because he went from the bench to the starting five in 2012, and played in 10 more minutes per game. If we look at his shooting numbers, Anderson went from .430/.393/.812 in 2011 to .439/.393/.877 this season. His shooting hardly changed aside from his free throws, and even factoring his free throws, the increase could have been due to variation as a a result of sampling. If we want to look at the Pts/Rebs/Assts/Stls/Blks line from a per-36 minute perspective, we'll see that he went from 17.2/8.0/1.3/0.8/1.0 in 2011 to 18.0/8.6/1.0/0.9/0.5 in 2012. His numbers remained fairly constant in those categories, and in fact dropped in three out of the five. Therefore, I'm going to conclude that Anderson didn't really improve, but was just given a chance.
A person who I feel did improve (that's kind of obvious considering I'm awarding him MIP) was Minnesota's Nikola Pekovic. Last year, Pekovic was basically a nobody. To be honest, I had absolutely no clue who this guy was at the beginning of the season. He came off the bench and provided only about 14 minutes a game, averaging 5.5 points and 3.0 rebounds. This year, Pekovic emerged as the starting center for Minnesota and an important contributor. He improved in just about every category in the box score. For example, on a per-36 basis, his scoring went up from 14.6 to 18.5 and his rebounding increased from 7.8 to 9.5. As well, his turnovers dropped from 3.7 to 2.5 and more impressive, his fouls plummeted from 7.3 to 2.8. His field goal percentage was already a good 51.7% last year, but that noticeably increased to 56.4% this year, good enough for second in the league. In a game against the Los Angeles in January, after Pekovic was sent to the bench, Laker Center Andrew Bynum said, "Thank God they took Pekovic out of the game." Would anyone have been saying that last year?
Finally, I want to talk about Jeremy Lin, which is a much debated candidate. There's two things going against him: 1) he only played in 35 games this entire season, and 2) some people say he didn't improve, but was rather just given an opportunity. In addressing the first part, I personally have to say I don't care that he didn't play in 31 games. Unlike an award like MVP, the Most Improved Player Award is for the one who improved the most, even if he couldn't make it the entire season. As for some people saying that he was always good but didn't get a chance, I'd have to disagree with that too. Even though Lin hardly played in the 2010-11 season, he did play over 200 minutes, which is enough to give us kind of a taste of who he was. For instance, in 2011, Lin shot just 38.9% from the field, and only attempted five three-pointers in 285 minutes. This year, Lin shot 44.6% from the field, and increased his three-point attempt rate by about four five time, converting on 32% of them. On a per-36 minute rate, Lin increased his assists from 5.3 to 8.3, and doubled his scoring rate from 9.6 to 19.6! And be honest, do you think Lin in his rookie year could have outplayed Kobe Bryant?
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