How to Bet the Coach of the Year Award?
Sportsbooks have released their odds for NBA's prestigious Coach of the Year award.
At BetOnline, you can find this bet under "Basketball." Click on "NBA Player Futures" (even though coaches aren't players) and then you will see "NBA Coach of the Year."
This is a bet that you will want to make because the outcome of the NBA's Coach of the Year race should interest you highly.
Unlike the Most Improved Player award – which is still fun to bet on – this is a prestigious award in the sense that fans, coaches, and players generally have great respect for it. Coaches desire this honor, which, unlike Most Improved Player, constitutes a noteworthy accolade on any coach's Hall of Fame resume.
Fortunately, betting on a reasonable candidate is not much more difficult than finding the award in BetOnline's menu in the first place.
As we will see, there are certain predictive criterion to guide us. Winners of this award – there has been one per year since the award was first handed out in the 1962-1963 season to Harry Gallatin – have come to fit into certain trends. Knowing these trends will help us choose a solid candidate.
Choosing the best candidate is not enough, though, for my taste.
I want to also choose a candidate with the best betting value.
Without getting too philosophical, I think betting value is an immensely important concept.
As of Tuesday morning on March 5, Oklahoma City's head coach is favored at -175 to win the award.
As discussing the key trends will make sense of, a lot can still happen to change the odds and to influence the results of the Coach of the Year race in a given season.
While Mark Daigneault is great and I really like him, it just doesn't make sense to invest in this future at -175. The concept of betting value rules him out for me.
After discussing the key trends, I will discuss why Jamahl Mosley is my choice for Coach of the Year. I think it is absolutely criminal and senseless that he is at +4000 to win the award.
Win Games...But How Many?
It is easy to rule out coaches because success is a necessary marker of a good coach and wins are a necessary indicator of success.
Predicting who will win Coach of the Year does not involve studying the complex X's and O's that coaches formulate and strategize with for every year.
This is very much a team award because the best coach is, very roughly stated, the coach who wins the most with what he has.
But, as I will explain more clearly, the "with what he has" is a key component. This award is not at all about choosing the best team.
Take legendary Lakers head coach Phil Jackson as an example.
Phil Jackson was an elite coach by any standard. Nobody would deny that he deserved his Hall of Fame entry.
And yet he only won Coach of the Year once.
He's had seasons where he won 67 games. He had a season where he won 69 games. Yet it took his '95-'96 Bulls winning 72 games for him to win Coach of the Year.
Similarly, it took his Warriors winning 73 games for Steve Kerr to win Coach of the Year.
Is It the Players or the Coach?
As valuable as success is, if a team is loaded with talent, then it might obscure and overshadow the coach's ability unless the team is so successful that it achieves an absurd number of victories.
This is why I don't like Tyronn Lue as a betting choice. While the Clippers are successful, they also have a very well-known and established trio of talent, now featuring James Harden, and they aren't going to win 70 games.
As much as a team's wins matter, its wins matter when measured against the talent that the team has.
Coach of the Year winners do tend to field teams that win 50+ games, although 50 wins is by no means set in stone as a minimum requirement.
When deciding on who to bet on for Coach of the Year, we will want to choose a team that wins a lot without perceptibly being carried by the player talent that it does possess.
Key Trend
The following factor makes sense because it is well-known who the top players are. Those top players are ones who attract favorable predictions from media pundits before the season begins.
Achievement relative to preseason expectations is a key factor for Coach of the Year selection because a great coach is typically thought of as one who performs very well with players who are not so established like, for example, the Clippers' trio.
A great coach, similarly, is one who improves his team substantially from one year to the next.
Note the following key trend that substantiates what I am saying: four of the last five Coach of the Year winners have taken their team into the top ten in offensive or defensive rating.
My Selection
I really like Orlando's head coach because he has taken the Magic who were 34-48 last year to 35-26 right now. His Magic just keep getting better: they've won eleven of their last 14 games and six of their last seven.
This improvement is largely a result of Orlando's excellent team defense, which is a product of Jamahl Mosley's coaching.
Whereas the Magic ranked 18th in defensive rating last year, they rank fourth in the category this year.
And Mosley is doing all of this not with well-known stars but with a lot of young players. He is helping a young team that misses superstar talent and that misses established shooters coalesce and develop into a legitimate force.
How he is only at +4000 is beyond me, but it's clear to me that he is the best value pick. For the above reasons, I confidently expect Mosley to win the award.
Best Bet: Jamahl Mosley at +4000 with BetOnline
Sportsbooks have released their odds for NBA's prestigious Coach of the Year award.
At BetOnline, you can find this bet under "Basketball." Click on "NBA Player Futures" (even though coaches aren't players) and then you will see "NBA Coach of the Year."
This is a bet that you will want to make because the outcome of the NBA's Coach of the Year race should interest you highly.
Unlike the Most Improved Player award – which is still fun to bet on – this is a prestigious award in the sense that fans, coaches, and players generally have great respect for it. Coaches desire this honor, which, unlike Most Improved Player, constitutes a noteworthy accolade on any coach's Hall of Fame resume.
Fortunately, betting on a reasonable candidate is not much more difficult than finding the award in BetOnline's menu in the first place.
As we will see, there are certain predictive criterion to guide us. Winners of this award – there has been one per year since the award was first handed out in the 1962-1963 season to Harry Gallatin – have come to fit into certain trends. Knowing these trends will help us choose a solid candidate.
Choosing the best candidate is not enough, though, for my taste.
I want to also choose a candidate with the best betting value.
Without getting too philosophical, I think betting value is an immensely important concept.
As of Tuesday morning on March 5, Oklahoma City's head coach is favored at -175 to win the award.
As discussing the key trends will make sense of, a lot can still happen to change the odds and to influence the results of the Coach of the Year race in a given season.
While Mark Daigneault is great and I really like him, it just doesn't make sense to invest in this future at -175. The concept of betting value rules him out for me.
After discussing the key trends, I will discuss why Jamahl Mosley is my choice for Coach of the Year. I think it is absolutely criminal and senseless that he is at +4000 to win the award.
Win Games...But How Many?
It is easy to rule out coaches because success is a necessary marker of a good coach and wins are a necessary indicator of success.
Predicting who will win Coach of the Year does not involve studying the complex X's and O's that coaches formulate and strategize with for every year.
This is very much a team award because the best coach is, very roughly stated, the coach who wins the most with what he has.
But, as I will explain more clearly, the "with what he has" is a key component. This award is not at all about choosing the best team.
Take legendary Lakers head coach Phil Jackson as an example.
Phil Jackson was an elite coach by any standard. Nobody would deny that he deserved his Hall of Fame entry.
And yet he only won Coach of the Year once.
He's had seasons where he won 67 games. He had a season where he won 69 games. Yet it took his '95-'96 Bulls winning 72 games for him to win Coach of the Year.
Similarly, it took his Warriors winning 73 games for Steve Kerr to win Coach of the Year.
Is It the Players or the Coach?
As valuable as success is, if a team is loaded with talent, then it might obscure and overshadow the coach's ability unless the team is so successful that it achieves an absurd number of victories.
This is why I don't like Tyronn Lue as a betting choice. While the Clippers are successful, they also have a very well-known and established trio of talent, now featuring James Harden, and they aren't going to win 70 games.
As much as a team's wins matter, its wins matter when measured against the talent that the team has.
Coach of the Year winners do tend to field teams that win 50+ games, although 50 wins is by no means set in stone as a minimum requirement.
When deciding on who to bet on for Coach of the Year, we will want to choose a team that wins a lot without perceptibly being carried by the player talent that it does possess.
Key Trend
The following factor makes sense because it is well-known who the top players are. Those top players are ones who attract favorable predictions from media pundits before the season begins.
Achievement relative to preseason expectations is a key factor for Coach of the Year selection because a great coach is typically thought of as one who performs very well with players who are not so established like, for example, the Clippers' trio.
A great coach, similarly, is one who improves his team substantially from one year to the next.
Note the following key trend that substantiates what I am saying: four of the last five Coach of the Year winners have taken their team into the top ten in offensive or defensive rating.
My Selection
I really like Orlando's head coach because he has taken the Magic who were 34-48 last year to 35-26 right now. His Magic just keep getting better: they've won eleven of their last 14 games and six of their last seven.
This improvement is largely a result of Orlando's excellent team defense, which is a product of Jamahl Mosley's coaching.
Whereas the Magic ranked 18th in defensive rating last year, they rank fourth in the category this year.
And Mosley is doing all of this not with well-known stars but with a lot of young players. He is helping a young team that misses superstar talent and that misses established shooters coalesce and develop into a legitimate force.
How he is only at +4000 is beyond me, but it's clear to me that he is the best value pick. For the above reasons, I confidently expect Mosley to win the award.
Best Bet: Jamahl Mosley at +4000 with BetOnline
