Kristian Winfield: Suns’ Monty Williams on pace for another Coach of the Year, but Steve Nash also has a case
NEW YORK — Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams is on pace for yet another NBA Coach of the Year award — and before you kill me, Steve Nash has a case, too.
Nash’s case is straightforward: The Nets shouldn’t be the East’s No. 1 seed.
Not without Kyrie Irving (and the drama surrounding his ineligibility), not with James Harden’s slow start and certainly not in a surprisingly loaded Eastern Conference. Nic Claxton has been out sick since last October, Joe Harris has gotten ankle surgery, yet there the Nets are, a team on pace to compete for a championship at the quarter mark of the season, an offensive juggernaut that has found its identity on the defensive end of the floor. While other East teams off to a hot start have simmered down 20-some-odd games in, the Nets have risen to the top, like an ice cube in cool water.
After Nets brass ruled Irving ineligible due to his vaccination status, Nash had to pivot. Without the polarizing offensive talent, the Nets are no longer a team that can rely on scoring firepower alone to win games. Nash realized that early on and, with the help of assistant coach Jacque Vaughn, found the lineup combinations that resulted in the NBA’s second-most efficient defense.
“They’re a terrific defensive team,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said this week. “The numbers say it.”
Yet Williams’ Suns have been the far more impressive team.
The Suns went undefeated in the month of November: They played 16 games in 30 days and won all of them. They gave the Nets a reality check and led by as many as 22 in their win at Barclays Center — their second game of a back-to-back. Nash praised his opponent after that game, acknowledging they were the far better team until Brooklyn’s failed fourth-quarter run.
“(This game was a ) great look at what it takes to play at the highest level in this league,” he said.
The Suns punctuated the month with a convincing win over Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors in a game Devin Booker left the second quarter with a hand injury. DeAndre Ayton missed six early games, too, but the Suns didn’t lose without him.
Williams, if you remember, coached his Suns to an 8-0 record in the Orlando bubble. He then won Coach of the Year last season, edging out Thibodeau and his surprise-story Knicks for the league’s coaching excellence honor.
Williams’ Suns made it to the NBA Finals last season and lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in six, but while the Bucks (14-8) are just starting to hit their stride, the Suns are already in midseason form.
At 15-6, Nash’s Nets look good, much better than they did to start the season. They’re trending in the right direction, and the defense being ahead of the offense is quite the pleasant surprise.
“You could say we’re a quarter of a way to finding our identity. The goal is by the end of the year we have an identity,” Nash said after Thursday’s practice. Nash says, like an NBA game, the team has broken its season-long progress into quarters: “We want to get better every quarter of the season. We just finished one quarter. Talked to the guys about this next quarter. Can we creep towards that group in the upper echelon?”
A quarter of the way through, the Nash’s Nets have made tangible progress toward the team they want to be: an explosive offensive team with a defense stronger than its wildest teams.
Williams’ team is already building on an identity that’s been established. The Suns aren’t built on the backs of multiple all-time greats, but they just might have one in their head coach.
