Nigerian Mike Brown, Sacramento Kings head coach was announced as the unanimous winner of the NBA’s Coach of the Year award.
All 100 voters from a panel of reporters and broadcasters had the 53-year-old atop their ballot.
The former Nigeria national basketball team D’Tigers coach, who led D’Tigers to Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan, led the Kings to a 48-34 record to finish third in the NBA’s Western Conference. It is his second time winning the award after previously winning the honor with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2009.
Interestingly, Mike Brown who was an assistant coach with the Golden State Warriors when Nigeria hired him as D’Tigers coach, has been away from the country’s bench for the better part of the season after leading his wards to qualify and participate in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan.
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He was not in the dugout when D’Tigers failed to qualify for the 2023 FIBA Men’s World Cup to be jointly hosted by multi-nations for the first time in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia.
It was speculated that he was been owed backlog of salaries and allowances by the NBBF which, perhaps, may have been responsible for why he stayed away from the Nigerian job. Although he had a very busy season with Sacramento Kings.
Mike Brown with the Sacramento Kings
When he was introduced last June as coach of the Sacramento Kings, Mike Brown didn’t make any grand proclamations or wild predictions.
He talked about work. He talked about culture. He talked about winning.
“One of the main reasons I was brought here,” Mike Brown said that day, “was to bring some leadership.”
Ask around, and no coach did a better job leading this season than Mike Brown. He was announced Wednesday as the unanimous winner of the NBA’s Coach of the Year award, an easy call after his first season in Sacramento saw the Kings make the playoffs for the first time since 2006. All 100 voters from a panel of reporters and broadcasters had Brown atop their ballot.
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“These honors don’t come around often so you’re very appreciative of them,” Mike Brown said on the TNT broadcast of the announcement. “I’m really appreciative of being in Sacramento. The fans, the city has been fantastic.”
Brown won the award for the second time, adding this trophy to the one he got after he and LeBron James led Cleveland to a 66-16 record in the 2008-09 season. The other finalists this season were Oklahoma City’s Mark Daigneault and Boston’s Joe Mazzulla.
Daigneault was second, Mazzulla third, and 14 coaches got at least one vote on the ballots where the selection panel was asked to pick their first-, second- and third-place choices.
The Kings were 48-34, the seventh-best record in the league and the first time they were a top-seven team since 2003-04. They led the league in points per game, had the best road record in the Western Conference, snapped a run of 16 consecutive losing seasons and won a division title for the first time since 2003.
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“Accountability has been big since Day 1,” Kings guard De’Aaron Fox said. “When he was hired, I told him that’s the most important thing, I felt like, to me was just being able to hold everybody accountable. That’s definitely the biggest thing.”
Brown’s victory was the third major event for the Kings in three days. On Monday, they beat Golden State for a 2-0 series lead in their Western Conference first-round matchup. On Tuesday, Fox was announced as the inaugural winner of the NBA’s clutch player of the year award. Wednesday brought the coaching award — and Thursday will see Sacramento trying to take a 3-0 lead over the defending champion Warriors.
Mike Brown was there last year with Golden State as an assistant coach, winning his fourth NBA title, all as an assistant — the first under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, the other three under Steve Kerr with the Warriors.
“Everybody in our building just feels so happy for Mike and strongly about what he did for us while he for us while he was here, how much he contributed to our championships here and our culture,” Kerr said before the Kings-Warriors series started. “We miss him, but we’re thrilled that he had this amazing season.”
Mike Brown becomes the 11th person to win the NBA’s coach award more than once, joining three-time recipients Pat Riley, Popovich and Don Nelson, along with fellow two-time winners Gene Shue, Bill Fitch, Hubie Brown, Cotton Fitzsimmons, Mike D’Antoni, Tom Thibodeau and Mike Budenholzer.
Until now, Toronto’s Nick Nurse was the record-holder for the most votes in a Coach of the Year race, getting 90 first-place picks in 2020. And Brown topped two highly deserving finalists on his way to the unanimous win.
Daigneault got Oklahoma City into the play-in tournament and a game from the No. 8 seed in a season where the Thunder were widely expected to struggle — especially after Chet Holmgren, the No. 2 pick in last year’s draft, suffered a foot injury over the summer and would miss the entire season.
Mazzulla wasn’t even supposed to be a head coach this year, then was forced to take over just before training camp when Boston suspended Ime Udoka following the disclosure of an inappropriate relationship with a female team employee. But Mazzulla, only 34, led Boston to the second-best record in the NBA and did so well that the Celtics removed the interim title and installed him as the full-fledged coach in February.
The Red Auerbach Trophy is named after the legendary Boston Celtics coach and is awarded to the NBA Coach of the Year winner. The trophy features the famous Lloyd Lillie sculpture of Auerbach on the bench with game plan in one hand and cigar in the other.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Basketball Federation (NBBF) has congratulated Mike Brown, on his been named 2022/23 American National Basketball Association (NBA) Coach of the Year.
In a statement issued yesterday, the NBA said Brown was named the award winner in recognition of his feats with Sacramento Kings during the season.
“Mike Brown is the first unanimous winner of the NBA Coach of the Year Award, which has been presented annually since the 1962-63 season,” the statement partly stated.
