On april 22nd Greg Popovich was named as NBA coach of the year, San Antonio Spurs’ head coach. San Antonio Spurs has been the team with the highest number of victories in the NBA season. It is well known that this kind of prizes used to reward the head coach of one of the strongest teams as it can be seen in either in the list of NBA coach of the year or in the list of World Soccer coach of the year. However, this kind of prizes should not be to one of the head coach of the best teams but to coach that has obtained the most given its rooster.
A few days ago it was published a post in this blog analyzing the differences between a coach rank published by the ESPN and the ranking derived using a methodology derived by me. In such a post there were already played 74 matches, while in the next table it is shown the results once the season was completed.
The most important result comparing both rankings is that Steve Clifford appeared in the very first position in the odds efficiency ranking whereas it was named the fourth best coach by the NBA. The results from odds efficiency suggest that it was more difficult to obtain 43 victories with the Charlotte Bobcats than to obtain both 62 victories with San Antonio Spurs and 48 victories with Phoenix Suns. In the “popularity” contest which is the NBA coach of the year Steve Clifford only got 127 points while Popovich got 380 and Hornacek 339 points.
Hence, the distance seems too big. A plausible explanation is that Clifford neither coach a big team nor was pro player as Hornacek. It is obvious that these prizes should only analyze the performance of the coach within the last year. The methodology developed by me is far from perfect but at minimum it provides an objective ranking that seems quite sensible. Therefore, I suggest that in these prizes the votations will be replaced by an objective measurement such as the proposed by me.
Follow me @jdelcorraltm