Thunder's Scott Brooks named NBA coach of the year

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma City Thunder coach Scott Brooks was recognized Wednesday as the NBA's coach of the year after engineering the league's best turnaround. The Thunder won 27 more games this season than they did a year ago, winning 50 and losing 32 and earning the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference playoffs with the NBA's youngest roster. The improvement came without a significant free agent signing. Instead, the team is primarily the same group of players as last season plus rookies James Harden, Serge Ibaka and Eric Maynor. Brooks and the Thunder now face another daunting turnaround: an 0-2 deficit in their best-of-seven series against the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. Game 3 is Thursday night in Oklahoma City. "This is the first-time playoff experience for a lot of us, including myself, and you're playing against one of the best coaches of all sports, one of the best players ever and a team that has 1,000 (games of) playoff experience to ours," Brooks said. "But you learn from playing against the best players and the best teams, and we're going to keep fighting and figuring out ways to beat them." Back when the Thunder were 3-29 last season, the notion of the playoffs coming to Oklahoma City any time soon was unimaginable. But it was that same miserable stretch that made general manager Sam Presti confident that Brooks was the right man to lead his team into the future. While Oklahoma City struggled to the worst start in the NBA, Presti was impressed by the way Brooks stayed the course and never tried to force immediate changes in hopes of making the Thunder better. Brooks received 71 of 123 first-place votes and 480 points to finish ahead of Milwaukee's Scott Skiles (26 first-place votes, 313 points) and Portland's Nate McMillan (9, 107. "He's someone that I think is incredibly consistent as a person. He is unaffected through adversities and also through successes, and I think that's an important quality we want to have as we move forward," Presti said. While the Thunder didn't immediately start winning after Brooks took over for the fired P.J. Carlesimo, there were signs of progress. His decision to move Kevin Durant from shooting guard to small forward increased his production, and the addition of Thabo Sefolosha and Nenad Krstic plus defensive-minded assistant Ron Adams started to pay dividends, too. "We were improved once he took over as the coach. We still lost some games that were tough but we were learning and we were getting better each day in practice," said Durant, who developed into the NBA's youngest scoring champion this season. "I knew if we continued to do that and not come in and just say, 'Our season's done. Ain't no need to practice. Ain't no need to work hard.' We still came in and worked every day, and he made sure he brought it every day as a coach." — AP