Leading the Milwaukee Bucks to a 26-win improvement from a year ago wasn't enough for Jason Kidd to be voted as NBA Coach of the Year.
The NBA announced Tuesday that Kidd finished third in the voting behind Atlanta's Mike Budenholzer and Golden State's Steve Kerr. Boston's Brad Stevens finished fourth and San Antonio's Gregg Popovich fifth.
Budenholzer, who led the Hawks from eighth to first in the Eastern Conference with a 22-win improvement, received 67 first-place votes, 58 second-place votes and four third-place votes for 513 points, easily defeating Kerr, who received 56 first-place votes, 61 second-place votes and eight third-place votes for 471 points.
Kidd garnered one first-place vote, five second-place votes and 37 third-place votes to finish a distant third with 57 points. His lone first-place vote came from Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon-Journal.
"It is about the players," Kidd said earlier this week when asked about being in the running for Coach of the Year. "The players do the lifting. My job is to make sure they are ready to go to put them in position to be successful. Hopefully I've done that with everyone I've coached this year.
"The culture has hopefully changed for the better. That's all that I'm concerned about."
Acquired in a trade from Brooklyn last summer to take over for Larry Drew, Kidd took the Bucks from a 15-win team to the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference with a 41-41 record. He led the 26-win turnaround despite No. 2 overall pick Jabari Parker suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament in December and losing starting center Larry Sanders to personal reasons.
The future Hall of Fame point guard is the first person in NBA history to lead two different teams to the playoffs in his first two seasons as a head coach.
Kidd's third-place finish is the highest for a Bucks coach since Scott Skiles was the runner up to Oklahoma City's Scott Brooks following the 2009-10 season. Don Nelson is the only Milwaukee coach to earn Coach of the Year honors, doing so in 1982-83 and 1984-85.
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