Kenny Atkinson has won the NBA’s 2024-25 Coach of the Year award, the league announced Monday. Atkinson is the latest in what is becoming an increasingly consistent trend among winners of this award, as he is now the sixth winner in the last 11 seasons to earn the award in his first season coaching a new team. That team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, has taken a significant step forward with Atkinson as its head coach.
Cleveland won 48 games under J.B. Bickerstaff last season, but jumped to 64 under Atkinson. That 16-win improvement was enough to earn the Cavaliers the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, and it set a new record, by far, for the best record Cleveland had ever posted without LeBron James on its roster. Before this season, the Cavaliers had never won more than 57 games in a season without James.
Bickerstaff was also a Coach of the Year finalist after guiding the Detroit Pistons to 44 wins (after 14 a season ago) and the East’s No. 6 seed in his first season in Detroit. Bickerstaff finished second in the voting, getting 31 first-place votes to Atkinson’s 59. Houston’s Ime Udoka finished third.
Atkinson’s journey to this award was unconventional, but shows just how important fit can be even for coaches. His first head-coaching job came with the Brooklyn Nets. There, he took over a team devoid of draft picks and helped build them into a respectable, playoff-caliber organization using mostly spare parts. That impressed Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving enough to sign in Brooklyn as free agents, but they ultimately clashed with Atkinson and he was fired before ever coaching Durant for a game in Brooklyn.
Atkinson became an assistant for winning teams after that, first joining the Los Angeles Clippers and then the Golden State Warriors. In 2022, after initially accepting an offer to become the head coach of the Charlotte Hornets, Atkinson elected to change his mind and remain with the Warriors. Waiting for the right job proved prescient, as the man who took that job, Steve Clifford, lasted only two years in it.
When Atkinson took over the Cavaliers last offseason, many assumed significant roster changes would follow. But with largely the same group, Atkinson has taken Cleveland to the top of the Eastern Conference and put the Cavaliers in position to potentially reach the Finals for the first time without James. He has a young group that has bought into his system, and now he’s set up to succeed in Cleveland for many years to come.
