Tuesday should’ve been a great day for Kenny Atkinson. Indeed, he was officially announced as the NBA Coach of the Year in the morning, a singular achievement, but later in the day, his Cleveland Cavaliers lost in a close one in the second round, putting the East’s best team down 0-2, to the Indiana Pacers. Knowing how competitive Atkinson is, you’d have to think the big moment of the day was the latter event. He hates to lose.
In his story on the award, Brian Lewis quoted Atkinson about just how bad things got in his first two years as head coach of the Brooklyn Nets in 2017 and 2018 when his teams won 21 and 28 games and shuttled marginal players through the new training facility in hopes of hitting on something.