dramatic turnaround he\u2019s engineered<\/a> in two years for Charlotte. A team that was firmly lottery-bound just a season ago has transformed into a legitimate play-in and potentially playoff threat. The Hornets are currently the hottest team in the league, posting an NBA\u2011best +14.1 net rating over their last 10 games.<\/p>\nHypothetically, if Charlotte finishes with 43 wins and sneaks into the seventh seed, that would give them a .524 record on the season\u2014an astonishing +29.2 percentage\u2011point jump from last season. That would mark the largest year\u2011over\u2011year improvement by any team since the 2009\u201310 season. That kind of turnaround doesn’t happen by accident. Lee has been instrumental in the team’s reversal. The team is buying into the system and a culture shift has taken place.<\/p>\n
History shows it\u2019s possible<\/p>\n
With 14 games remaining, the Hornets could theoretically max out at 48 wins. While that scenario is unlikely, it\u2019s worth noting that recent Coach of the Year winners haven\u2019t always needed 50 wins to secure the award. Mike Brown (48\u201334 in 2022\u201323), Tom Thibodeau (41\u201331 in 2020\u201321), and Nick Nurse (46\u201318 in 2019\u201320) all earned the honor without hitting the 50\u2011win threshold.<\/p>\n
At the moment, J.B. Bickerstaff and Joe Mazzulla appear to be the frontrunners. Bickerstaff has elevated the Detroit Pistons from a bottom of the barrel franchise to the No. 1 seed in just two seasons. Mazzulla has guided the Boston Celtics to the No. 2 seed despite the absence of superstar Jayson Tatum. Not to mention that the Hornets just fell to Mitch Johnson and the San Antonio Spurs on the road.<\/p>\n
Still, when you combine Charlotte\u2019s massive year\u2011over\u2011year improvement with the low expectations they faced entering the season, the case for Charles Lee becomes even more compelling<\/a>. And if he doesn\u2019t take home the award this year, he\u2019s setting himself up as an early favorite for next season \u2014 especially with three potential All\u2011Stars developing under his watch in LaMelo Ball, Kon Knueppel, and Brandon Miller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The argument for Charles Lee as the NBA\u2019s Coach of the Year is no longer a far-fetched idea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[7,684,473,3878,685,6],"class_list":["post-659232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-charlotte-hornets","tag-basketball","tag-charlotte","tag-charlotte-hornets","tag-charlottehornets","tag-hornets","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116231787355141472","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}