Milwaukee Bucks: Mike Budenholzer deserves Coach of the Year buzz

With the Milwaukee Bucks on track for another historic regular season campaign, Mike Budenholzer deserves his share of Coach of the Year buzz.

The Milwaukee Bucks are steamrolling their way through the NBA as we get set to hit the All-Star break in the 2019-20 season, and may well be set to burst their way into the history books by winning over 70 games on the campaign.

Those facts have created plenty of well-deserved buzz around Giannis Antetokounmpo as a likely repeat winner of the league’s Most Valuable Player award, but the 25-year-old isn’t the only Bucks figure who should be considered as a strong contender to retain the accolade they earned in 2018-19.

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In that regard, although there hasn’t been very much discussion about it so far, it’s certainly time that Mike Budenholzer’s case as Coach of the Year starts to gain meaningful momentum.

The consensus currently seems to place Nick Nurse as the frontrunner, which is very difficult to quibble with given Toronto’s own 40-14 record, how they’ve dealt with the departure of Kawhi Leonard and multiple injuries throughout the season, and the Raptors’ current franchise-best 15 win streak.

There is also undoubtedly a sense that Nurse could easily have been the winner of last year’s award, particularly in hindsight after vanquishing the Bucks and going on to win a championship in the postseason.

There is another historical factor that plays into the lack of buzz focusing on Coach Bud, though, with that being the fact that no coach has ever repeated as a Coach of the Year winner.

With the award dating back to the 1962-63 season, that represents a remarkable quirk of fate, and something of an oversight given the consistent dominance of so many teams and coaches across that period of time.

Of course, a major marker in crowning a Coach of the Year winner is always year-to-year improvement. By default, that can lead to a disqualification of sorts for the reigning Coach of the Year, and yet the Bucks’ current trajectory means that may not prove to be the case for Budenholzer this year.

If Milwaukee beat the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night, they’ll enter the All-Star break on pace for 71-wins, and an 11-win improvement on their record from a year ago.

Given just how little room for improvement last season’s success left, the possibility of Budenholzer and the Bucks maximizing their opportunity to improve can’t be overlooked.

Only two teams in NBA history have won 70 games or more, and both Phil Jackson and Steve Kerr were rewarded for those chunks of history with the Coach of the Year award.

Budenholzer’s Bucks have seen their league-best defense hold up and even improve from last season, while the Milwaukee offense has also become more varied and less easy to gameplan against than it was in 2018-19.

Another Coach of the Year win would see Budenholzer equal Don Nelson, Pat Riley, and Gregg Popovich with three wins in that category, giving him the opportunity to become the coach with the most wins of the award if he was to pick up another success later in his career.

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Before that, though, could Coach Bud become the first coach in NBA history to repeat as the award’s winner? If the Bucks continue winning at their current rate, it would be unprecedented for him not to be back on stage at the NBA Awards in June.

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