By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Anadolu Efes head coach Ergin Ataman was voted by his peers as the winner of EuroLeague’s Alexander Gomelskiy Coach of the Year award. Ataman led Efes to the first EuroLeague championship in the history of the club.
Ataman received 12 first-place votes in the voting among EuroLeague head coaches.
Per EuroLeague:
Ergin Ataman’s outstanding work on the Anadolu Efes Istanbul bench was recognized on Monday with the announcement that he has won the Alexander Gomelskiy Coach of the Year award for the 2020-21 season as voted by his peers, the head coaches of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
Ataman made history this season by leading Efes to its first EuroLeague title, completing a run that started when he took over a team in last place midway through the 2017-18 season. Efes finished the regular season in third place with a 22-12 record before disposing of the previous two champions – 2018 winner Real Madrid in the playoffs and 2019 winner CSKA Moscow in the semifinals – to reach the championship game, where it outlasted FC Barcelona. Efes became the first team in more than two decades to lift the EuroLeague trophy without any previous winners of the competition on the squad.
The Coach of the Year award is chosen by EuroLeague head coaches with the stipulation that no coach votes for himself. Behind Ataman, who received 12 of a possible 18 first-place votes, came Andrea Trinchieri of FC Bayern Munich, Ettore Messina of AX Armani Exchange Milan and Sarunas Jasikevicius of FC Barcelona.
Although the voting for the award is based solely on the 2020-21 season, Ataman laid the groundwork for his team’s triumph over three seasons. After leading Efes to the championship game in 2019, he had Efes coasting atop the standings with a 24-4 record when the 2019-20 season came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This season, injuries caused Efes to stumble out of the gate with an 8-9 record at the midway point of the regular season. Ataman guided his team to wins in 11 of their next 12 games, however, to clinch home-court advantage for a EuroLeague Playoffs showdown against Real Madrid. Efes was once again dominant against Real with respective victories by 27 and 23 points in the first two playoff games. Real turned the series on its head with come-from-behind victories in Games 3 and 4 in the Spanish capital, but those would be the final losses for Ataman’s team this season. Efes won Game 5 at home, triumphed over CSKA and Barcelona at the Final Four in Cologne and then rolled past archrival Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul to capture the Turkish League championship.
Over the last three seasons, Ataman’s squad has relied on a dynamic backcourt to lead the league in scoring (85.2 ppg.) and three-point shots made (1,112). The likes of Vasilije Micic, Shane Larkin, Krunoslav Simon and Rodrigue Beaubois formed a perimeter attack that opponents could not contain. Ataman was behind it all, believing in his players, encouraging them to attack and shoot. His coaching helped turn Micic from a reserve player in the EuroLeague MVP and Sertac Sanli from a fringe player to a starting center who dominated key stretches of the Final Four. Alongside them, veterans such as Adrien Moerman, Bryant Dunston, Chris Singleton, James Anderson and Tibor Pleiss accepted smaller roles under Ataman to create a team that deferred to the hot hand or the best matchup to win more games – 75 – than any team in the past three seasons.