There’s an argument to be made that Billy Donovan’s final season as the Oklahoma City Thunder head coach was his finest over his five years with the team.
The Thunder, with a revamped roster, tied for the fourth-best record in the Western Conference despite being projected to be a lottery team in the tougher half of the association.
Oklahoma City was the best team in crunch time and took the Houston Rockets to seven games in the first round of the playoffs.
As a result of the way his team exceeded expectations, Donovan placed third in Coach of the Year voting, behind Nick Nurse of the Toronto Raptors and Mike Budenholzer of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Here is a breakdown of the 62 voters who included Donovan on their ballots:
First place
- Chris Haynes, Yahoo! Sports
- Mark Jackson, ESPN
- Mark Jones, ESPN
- Simone Sandri, La Gazzetta Dello Sport
Second place
- Steve Aschburner, NBA.com
- Jon Barry, ESPN
- Tim Bontemps, ESPN
- Doris Burke, ESPN
- Shams Charania, ESPN
- Anthony Chiang, Miami Herald
- Davide Chinellato, La Gazzetta dello Sport
- Vince Goodwill, Yahoo! Sports
- Jared Greenberg, Turner
- Will Guillory, The Athletic
- Kevin Harlan, Turner
- Erik Horne, The Athletic
- Frank Isola, Sirius Radio
- Coral Lu, ESPN-Tencent
- Jackie MacMullan, ESPN
- Brian Mahoney, Associated Press
- Kevin O’Connor, The Ringer
- Candace Parker, Turner
- Tim Reynolds, Associated Press
- Josh Robbins, The Athletic
- Dennis Scott, Turner
- Doug Smith, The Toronto Star
- Steve Smith, Turner
- Brad Townsend, Dallas Morning News
- Joe Vardon, The Athletic
- Gary Washburn, Boston Globe
- Brian Windhorst, ESPN
- Royce Young, ESPN
Third place
- Sam Amick, The Athletic
- Jason Anderson, Sacramento Bee
- Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN
- Rod Beard, Detroit News
- Marc Berman, New York Post
- Mike Breen, ESPN
- Chris Fedor, Cleveland.com
- Mike Ganter, The Toronto Sun
- Zach Harper, The Athletic
- Lisa Hsu, Tencent
- Cassidy Hubbarth, ESPN
- Kelly Iko, The Athletic
- Fred Katz, The Athletic
- Chris Kirschner, The Athletic
- Nick Kosmider, The Athletic
- Zach Lowe, ESPN
- Maxime Malet, L’Equipe
- Chris Mannix, Sports illustrated
- Jeff McDonald, San Antonio Express-News
- Mark Medina, USA Today
- Yoko Miyaji, Sports Graphic Numbers
- Rachel Nichols, ESPN
- Keith Pompey, Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News
- Shaun Powell, NBA.com
- Ramona Shelburne, ESPN
- Mirjam Swanson, Southern California News Group
- Matt Velazquez, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- Michael Wilbon, ESPN
- Matt Winer, Turner
- Jeff Zillgitt, USA Today
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