Thinking Basketball podcast. My name is Ben. Welcome back to another show. And today, Cody, we have all sorts of incredible basketball things to discuss. But how are you doing before we start? I want to check in with your vibes right now.

It's an exciting time because I think our next podcast after this is the thinkies. And I think

I build my entire world around this. Like some people build their movie world around the Oscars and

they they count up to it and they do all the prognostigation. I kind of hit that word

correctly. Who knows? I'm like, I'm like 5% stuffed and it made it kind of difficult, but the

thinkies are like, it's the mountain men. It's the mountain. So everything for me is is thinkies forward at

the moment. Well, we have an incredible coach of the year race that I would like to discuss.

And we've talked before about how hard it is to evaluate coaches and we'll revisit that in a second.

But one thing that struck me, Cody, is when we think about the top stories of the season,

a lot of them kind of can be filtered through the Coach of the Year conversation, right?

Like the incredible surprise of the Boston Celtics.

What has Joe Missoula done to turn that around?

And why do I think he should be the favorite for Coach of the Year?

The continued ascension of the Detroit Pistons and what makes them successful.

And I kind of get a sense that it's a little ethereal for people. I mean, this is what happens when you have, like, one really standout player in Cade Cunningham, and then you win with defense. It's like, people go, okay, so how good are they? Like, what's going to happen in the playoffs? I don't really get it. The San Antonio Spurs, and their incredible rise this year with all these young players. I mean, they have like one old dude on the team.

Harrison Barnes and Harrison Barnes is not that old.

Everyone else is pretty young.

So the turnaround in Charlotte, how legit is Charles Lee and the Charlotte Hornets and what

have they done there?

So there's a lot that I think we can get to in terms of talking about the shape of the season in these stories, but I want to dive in even deeper on what I've seen from the coaches this year. And kind of we started the year by saying, man, there's a lot of great coaching jobs and a lot of interesting things. And here we are full circle at the end of the season with all these coaches on the table. So I'd like to go there. Today we've got some other stuff

to hit. But that's where my mind is at. So Coach of the Year, I feel like I have a solid

handle on the narratives of a lot of other awards that are given out at the end of the season. But

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