NBA Coach of the Year odds: Best bets for every tier, including several intriguing long shots

Everything you need to know about the NBA’s Coach of the Year award can be summed up in Mike Brown’s two-and-a-half-year tenure with the Sacramento Kings. The 2022-23 Kings won 48 games with a plus-2.6 net rating. The 2023-24 Kings won 46 games with a plus-1.8 net rating. The rosters were nearly identical. All eight players who played more than 1,000 minutes for the 2022-23 Kings were back on the team for the 2023-24 season. Brown more or less had two identical seasons. They were, at most, within the margin for error of one another. In 2023, Brown was chosen as Coach of the Year unanimously. In 2024, he did not receive a single vote.

This is not an award that honors coaching quality. Miami Heat maestro Erik Spoelstra has never won it. It’s an award that honors performance relative to expectations. When Brown took over the Kings, they had spent nearly two decades in the lottery. In his second season, they were a reigning playoff team. Despite their nearly identical performance, they fell by seven seeds because of slightly worse health and a stronger conference ahead of them. Sure enough, those altered expectations doomed Brown in the end. He was fired 31 games into his third season in Sacramento.

So when we’re evaluating Coach of the Year candidates, expectations mean just as much as performance. There certainly is a performance barometer, to be clear. Every winner since Scott Brooks in 2010 has led a top-four seed, and 10 of the last 14 winners have led No. 1 seeds. 

But we’re looking for overachievers here. Last year’s winner was Kenny Atkinson. The Cavaliers won 64 games against a preseason projection of 48.5. It was the same in 2024. The Thunder were projected to win 44.5 and they won 57, so Mark Daigneault was the winner. Every winner since Gregg Popovich in 2014 has beaten their Vegas win total line by at least 10 except for Nick Nurse in 2020, who only failed to do so because COVID-19 shortened the season. In a perfect world, there’s a surprise No. 1 seed and that’s our winner. In the absence of a surprise No. 1 seed, we’re looking for a surprise in the 2-4 range.

So with that in mind, let’s take a look at this year’s Coach of the Year odds and identify the best value bets on the board. We’ll divide this into three sections: one for coaches with odds of +1000 or shorter, one for coaches between +1000 and +2000, and one for all coaches with odds longer than +2000. All odds come from Caesars Sportsbook.

The favorites

We have four coaches in this bracket, and there’s one facing by far the toughest road here: David Adelman at +900. Denver is projected to win 53.5 games by Vegas. Therefore, we’re asking Denver to win 64 games to significantly outperform expectations. That doesn’t feel especially likely, and even if it happens, it’s not clear who will get rewarded for it. There’s rarely overlap between Coach of the Year and MVP. The only two overlaps we’ve seen since Brooks won in 2010 were Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry in 2016 and Mike Budenholzer and Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2019. If Denver is the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, it just seems likelier that voters reward Nikola Jokić than Adelman. So even if Adelman is an improvement on Michael Malone (and the playoffs were promising in that respect), he just doesn’t fit the profile of a typical winner.

Our next three candidates are, fittingly, in the same cluster of Eastern Conference teams. New York is projected at 53.5 wins, Orlando at 50.5 and Atlanta at 47.5. The betting favorite is Orlando’s Jamahl Mosley at +600, followed closely by Atlanta’s Quin Snyder at +700 and New York’s Mike Brown at +800. The likeliest course for the Eastern Conference would be Cleveland snagging the No. 1 seed, but Atkinson failing to win for a second straight season because no Coach of the Year has ever repeated. Therefore, the No. 2 seed in the East immediately becomes our top candidate, and there’s a good chance it’s one of these three.

So, who’s the best value of the three? Vegas got this one right. Mosley makes the most sense, followed by Snyder and then Brown. Orlando and New York are the two teams with obvious top-of-the-conference potential. Atlanta is a tier below them and carries significant injury risk between Kristaps Porziņģis and Jalen Johnson. If Snyder’s odds were a tad longer, that risk might be acceptable. At this price, it’s a pass. Brown, meanwhile, has the unenviable task of replacing a coach that was by and large pretty successful. The ways in which he’ll succeed in this job are mostly going to manifest in the postseason. If we assume he plays his starters less than Tom Thibodeau did (and basically every coach does), New York is probably not going to make a nine-win jump up to 60. They’re just starting from too good of a place.

Orlando is the perfect middle ground. Their expectations are justifiably higher than Atlanta’s, but lower than New York’s. Their defensive baseline offers security few teams have, as they finished second in the NBA on that end last season despite injuries to basically everyone. Those same injuries are going to give them credit for improvement that has frankly already happened. They only won 41 games a year ago, but Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner both took meaningful jumps. They just barely played together, and when they did, it was with miserable spacing that Orlando has already greatly improved upon thanks in large part to the addition of Desmond Bane. Injuries are a concern here, yes, but the Magic are deeper than the Hawks and frankly pretty used to compensating for absences.

Best bet: Mosley at +600 is a must-have for any Coach of the Year portfolio. Snyder is a justifiable bet. I’d likely stay away from Brown or Adelman.

The middle of the pack

I’m going to be perfectly honest: I’m not interested in any Western Conference coach with a team projected to win, let’s say, 45 games or more. Sorry Ime Udoka (+1200), JJ Redick (+2000) and Ty Lue (+2000). The conference is so good and so deep that the standings tend to condense. Case in point: The difference between No. 2 and No. 8 in the standings last year was four wins. I expect Denver and Oklahoma City to run away from the pack. Everyone else is stuck in the middle. Expectations therefore factor in meaningfully. If I’m taking a coach from one of the teams that I suspect to wind up in that clump, I want it to be from a team with lower expectations.

San Antonio is right on that borderline at 44.5 wins. However, I’m lower on Mitch Johnson for a few reasons. The team is still quite young, and it’s also dealing with quite a bit of stylistic overlap. Figuring out how to make De’Aaron Fox, Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle work together will require deft coaching, but I imagine it takes a toll in the standings. Besides, if the Spurs go 10 games over expectations, it probably means Victor Wembanyama has entered the MVP chat. He’s likelier to be rewarded by the voters than his coach.

Just by virtue of his lower expectations, Chauncey Billups (+2000) is the most interesting Western Conference coach in this tier to me. The line is only at 34.5 wins. By trading for Jrue Holiday, Portland sent a message that it wants to be competitive this season. The regular season means more to them than it will many of the older teams held in higher regard. If they get into the clump in the middle of the conference, they’re going to be able to steal a lot of wins on effort alone. You can be a team that plays .500 quality basketball, which is roughly where I’d expect Portland to fall, but ultimately wins more games than that on circumstance. There is a world in which that happens, so Billups is an interesting swing here under the hope that the West is so tight that they manage to snag a higher seed than expected, even if the win total isn’t outrageous.

Really, though, my eyes are on the East. That’s where there’s far more room for a team to jump up and seriously contend for a top seed. Erik Spoelstra (+2000) is a justifiable bet on the premise that he’ll win any tiebreaker. The voters will want to pick him if it’s at all feasible considering his résumé and the fact that he’s never won. However, I’m lower on the Heat’s roster than most, so I personally wouldn’t expect him to seriously contend. I have the same issue with Toronto’s Darko Rajakovic. That’s a Play-In roster to me, and a Play-In team in the East just isn’t going to swing it. We’re looking for upside here, and the upside comes from two teams.

The first is Detroit, but I doubt JB Bickerstaff (+1000) will be able to muster much momentum for a big improvement this year since he lost last year despite helping the Pistons win 30 more games. If he adds another 10, which is feasible given how strongly Detroit closed last season and how young that team is, it just isn’t going to look as impressive by comparison.

That leaves us with my favorite pick in this range: Nick Nurse (+1400). Look, we have no idea how healthy anyone is. We don’t know if Paul George is washed. These are reasonable criticisms. But at 14-to-1, the upside here significantly outweighs the downside. I know a team with a healthy Joel Embiid, even if it’s only for 60 games instead of 80, can snag a top Eastern Conference seed because it has done so. On paper, the healthy version of this roster might be better than any 76ers team Embiid has played on since the brief Jimmy Butler tenure. And even if Embiid does miss substantial time, having George and Tyrese Maxey gives the 76ers enough room to theoretically at least stay afloat for shorter stretches.

Best bet: Imagine a world in which Embiid suffers an early injury and misses 20 games or so. Philadelphia goes .500. He comes back and they significantly improve. The narrative is going to be about how Nurse held them together. He’s a prior winner with a great schematic reputation. He’s the best combination of long odds and realistic upside.

The long shots

Ironically, our last two winners are in this tier, as Vegas isn’t high on Mark Daigneault (+3000) and has all but dismissed Kenny Atkinson (+6000). They’ve figured out that this award is about expectations and improvement, and it’s really hard to improve upon what Cleveland and Oklahoma City did a year ago. Your team can be too good to win this award. After all, Phil Jackson only won it once.

Your team can also be too bad. Coaches don’t win this award by turning a 20-win roster into a 35-win roster. Jordi Fernandez (+5000) is an awesome young coach. He doesn’t have the roster talent to compete for this award yet. So scratch off any team without a realistic chance of competing for a playoff spot.

We’re looking for the teams in between, those with low-to-medium expectations that they can outperform. In this group, four candidates stand out:

• Joe Mazzulla (+2500) is probably going to steal a lot of wins on shot-selection alone. Hoisting a billion 3s can be detrimental when you’re a favorite, as Boston learned against New York last spring. As an underdog, which the Celtics now are, it’s a great way to create enough variance to win games you ought to lose. There’s a world in which they start slow and pivot into a tank, but there’s also one in which Jayson Tatum returns during the season and they suddenly look like a strong sleeper in April. At 25-to-1, I’d take the chance if I were building a portfolio.
• Speaking of gap-year teams, Rick Carlisle (+4000) is even more enticing. The Pacers, institutionally, almost never tank. You could argue that’d be their best use of this season, but it would be completely out of character. Carlisle is as creative as coaches get, and he has young players he can lean on for bigger roles this season like Bennedict Mathurin and Jarace Walker. He’ll also get plenty of credit for the Jay Huff heist that the front office pulled off. If Indiana is in the top-six mix in the East, Carlisle will get consideration. Like Spoelstra, he’s someone voters will want to reward based on his body of work, though he did win this award all the way back in 2002.
• The Warriors, from an expectations standpoint, are in the same bucket as the Rockets, Lakers and Clippers. The difference is that I can get their coach, Steve Kerr, at +5000. At 50-to-1, sure, I’ll take the chance that this awesome but old roster stays healthy, builds on last year’s success with Jimmy Butler and cashes in the Jonathan Kuminga trade chip midseason for something valuable.
• In case you didn’t notice, the Bulls went 17-10 after the All-Star break last season. Do I believe that was real? No, not really. But their fast-paced style is very annoying to play against over a long, 82-game season, and Billy Donovan (+7500) has made lemonade out of defensive lemons in the past. There’s a shred of Sacramento in Chicago in that the Bulls are so institutionally mistrusted that just making the playoffs there rather than their annual No. 9 seed would be viewed as a significant accomplishment.

If you want to add Doc Rivers (+7500) to this list, I see the argument. The Bucks are another Eastern Conference team with a wide range of outcomes. I’m just personally on the very low end of expectations for them, and if they do overperform, I suspect the credit will go to Giannis Antetokounmpo.