Willie Green wasn’t the Coach of the Year, but he wasn’t too far off

METAIRIE – Willie Green wasn’t named the NBA Coach of the Year.

In fact, the New Orleans Pelicans head coach wasn’t even one of the three finalists for the honor.

Former Pelicans coach Monty Williams won the award Monday for the job he did in leading the Phoenix Suns, who eliminated New Orleans in the first round, to the best record in the NBA.

Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins, whose Grizzlies came out of practically nowhere to claim the No. 2 seed in the West, was the runner-up and Miami coach Erik Spoelstra finished third for the job he did in leading the Heat to the No. 1 seed in the East.

All three finalists are coaching teams that are still playing and each is deserving of his selection.

But Monday’s announcement provides an appropriate time to reflect on another of the better coaching jobs done this season and that brings us to Green, who had never been a head coach before.

When the Pelicans’ improbable playoff appearance ended with a Game 6 loss to the Suns on April 28, guard Jose Alvarado showed up for the post-game news conference wearing a T-shirt featuring Green’s image and a “Coach of the Year” inscription.

“He’s my coach of the year,” said Alvarado, an undrafted rookie who found himself matched against future Hall of Famer Chris Paul with games, the series and the season on the line.

“I can’t thank him enough for the way he trusts me,” Alvarado said of Green. “He changed my life.”

Fellow rookies Trey Murphy III and Herbert Jones Jr. made similar comments about the confidence they drew from the rookie head coach having faith in the rookie players.

“He was very supportive,” Murphy said. “He’s the same person every single day.”

That trait was put to the test early on. The Pelicans lost 12 of their first 13 games and 16 of their first 19.

“He treated everybody with respect, brought confidence to everybody,” guard Devonte’ Graham said of Green. “At the beginning of the year we were all learning as we went along. Everybody grew.”

Everybody grew because nobody panicked – especially the head coach.

Green, his staff and the players kept going to work each day, trying to get better each practice and each game. And they did get progressively better.

They won more frequently, they traded for CJ McCollum and Larry Nance Jr. and Brandon Ingram got healthier and emerged as a star.

Gradually, Green’s team ascended away from the bottom of the Western Conference, slipped into the play-tin tournament, won consecutive eliminations games and made the Williams’ team sweat.

Green said the playoff series “was fun coaching against a team that’s going to bring (the best) out of you.”

He credited Williams, for whom he was an assistant for two seasons, and Golden State coach Steve Kerr, who also has had a fine season and under whom Green won an NBA championship in his only season as an assistant in 2018-19, for teaching him to be “extremely detailed.”

“We were going at it,” Green said of the Pelicans and the Suns. “They were making adjustments, we were making adjustments. Give those guys credit. They did it better, but we pushed them to be better.”

And Green, just seven years removed from the final season of his 12-year playing career, got better as much as his rookie players did.

“I’ve grown a lot,” said Green, who will turn 41 during the off-season. “I’ve learned a lot and made a ton of mistakes along the way. But I’m blessed and fortunate that we have people that allow room for mistakes. We just kept working at it together. …

“Nobody passed judgment on each other. We just stayed at it, stayed working.”

While the younger players appreciated Green’s confidence in them, the older players appreciated his willingness to accept – even embrace – input from them. He didn’t see inexperience as a liability and he saw experience as an asset to be utilized.

“It’s a rare breed of coach that can stay open minded in the harshest of circumstances,” said Nance, a seven-year veteran. “In playoff games, play-in games he was listening to players a lot. CJ would see something and say, “I see this, can we do this?’ ‘Yeah, you’re on the court.’

“(Ingram), myself, some of the more experienced guys can come to him with whatever we saw and he was very receptive in harsh environments so to me that’s the true definition of a player’s coach.”

The head coach will no longer be a rookie next season and he plans to approach his summer the same way he expects his players to.

“The biggest way to get better is to listen,” Green said. “I’ll listen to all the players, all the staff on what worked, what are things we want to tweak, what do we like, which plays we want to get rid of. I’ll stay true to who I am while also adjusting.”

Green said he’ll look at tape of all 90 Pelicans games. The edited versions will average about 38 minutes each of pure basketball action.

“It won’t be fun in beginning,” Green admitted, “but I’ll watch them.”

He’ll see a team that could have collapsed before Christmas, that started to figure things out early in the New Year, that took off after the trade for McCollum and Nance, that produced one of the most surprising seasons in the NBA.

“Willie vibrates to a different frequency than other people,” vice president of basketball operations David Griffin said. “I think it’s pretty clear why we were so excited about him.”