Mazzulla surges for COY

Joe Mazzulla closed the regular season as the center of the National Basketball Association Coach of the Year debate after Boston turned a projected reset season into 55 wins and the East’s No. 2 seed. (basketball-reference.com) As of April 9, Odds Shark listed Detroit Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff as the betting favorite at -260, with Mazzulla at +220. By April 7, NBC Sports writers were already calling it a “tight race” and giving Mazzulla most of their picks. (oddsshark.com) (nbcsports.com) The case for Mazzulla starts with Boston’s roster and injury context. Jayson Tatum ruptured his Achilles tendon in the 2025 playoffs, and ESPN reported last spring that the Celtics should plan for him to miss the entire 2025-26 regular season. (espn.com) Boston also spent June 2025 breaking up parts of its 2024 title core. Fox Sports and CBS Sports reported that the Celtics traded Jrue Holiday to Portland and Kristaps Porzingis to Atlanta as the club worked around second-apron payroll pressure. (foxsports.com) (cbssports.com) That left Mazzulla coaching a different team than the one that won the 2024 National Basketball Association Finals. NBC Sports pointed to Boston finishing near the top of the league on both offense and defense while leaning harder on Derrick White, Payton Pritchard and Neemias Queta. (nbcsports.com) Bickerstaff still has the cleanest turnaround résumé. Detroit finished 44-38 in 2024-25 after a 14-win season the year before, then followed that by reaching 60 wins in its 2025-26 finale, according to The Detroit News. (detroitnews.com) The award is voted on after the regular season by a panel of sportswriters in the United States and Canada, not by playoff results. That timing keeps the focus on whether voters prefer Detroit’s two-year climb under Bickerstaff or Boston’s one-year survival act under Mazzulla. (nbacoaches.com) The standings show how narrow the comparison became by the final week. Detroit finished 59-22 through 81 games in Basketball-Reference’s table, with Boston four games back at 55-26, and both teams entered April on strong closing runs. (basketball-reference.com) (espn.com) What changed in the race was not one headline win but the shape of Boston’s season. A coach who began the year managing an injured star, a trimmed payroll and a thinner rotation ended it with a 55-win team and a real chance at the Red Auerbach Trophy. (espn.com) (nbacoaches.com)