2021-22 NBA Awards Media Poll: Coach of the Year
Over the last few weeks, the NBA awards have been a hot topic of discussion around the NBA world.
The three finalists for each award were announced on Sunday, but SI Fastbreak has collected data from NBA media members around the country covering both the league at-large and individual teams.
These media members were asked to vote on their Top-3 for Coach of the Year this season with the voting process working as follows:
- 5 points for every first-place vote
- 3 points for every second-place vote
- 1 points for every third-place vote
Here is SI Fastbreak’s official voting results for the 2021-22 NBA Coach of the Year:
Coach of the Year: Monty Williams - Phoenix Suns
This year’s recipient of the Michael H. Goldberg NBCA Coach of the Year Award, Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams is also expected to be named the NBA’s Coach of the Year.
The last two seasons have been magical for the Phoenix Suns as an organization and ever since Monty Williams took over the head coaching position in 2019, the Suns have been building something special.
Finishing second in the voting for Coach of the Year last season after taking his team to the NBA Finals, Williams is fully expected to win the award this season as a result of coaching the Suns to a 64-18 record, their best season in team history.
In the voting seen above, the Suns’ head coach took in 13 of the 20 total first-place votes and accumulated 74 of 100 possible points in the voting process.
The other two finalists for NBA Coach of the Year this season in Taylor Jenkins and Erik Spoelstra finished second and fourth, respectively, in the media voting, as Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka finished a few votes and points ahead of Spoelstra for third.
Other deserving head coaches that received votes were Cleveland Cavaliers’ J.B. Bickerstaff, Minnesota Timberwolves’ Chris Finch, Dallas Mavericks’ Jason Kidd and Los Angeles Clippers’ Tyronn Lue.
So many coaches did a fantastic job this season with their teams and all of the coaches on this list deserve appreciation for what they achieved this year.
All eight of the names seen above went above and beyond to ensure success for their respective organizations this year and there are plenty of other fantastic coaches around the league that did not receive votes.
Looking at the NBA as a whole right now, this may very well be the best era of head coaches we have ever had.