Rob Paternostro of the BBL Championship-winning Leicester Riders has won the 2020-21 Ed Percival Molten BBL Coach of the Year award, voted by his peers, after leading his team to a 24-6 BBL Championship record in one of the most competitive seasons in BBL history.
This is the sixth time that he has won the award - and fourth in the last five years - which itself leads to another remarkable accolade as he moves clear of Kevin Cadle and Fabulous Flournoy, who have five each, as the coach with the most annual awards in BBL history. Paternostro received seven votes from fellow BBL Head Coaches, quite some way clear of Paul James of Plymouth Raiders in second place.
This was a fifth BBL Championship title in Leicester's history, all of which have come under his stewardship having taken over the role in 2008 before the first league title came in 2012-13. He won his first Coach of the Year award after transforming Riders in that initial 2008-09 season, immediately taking them from tenth to third, and they have only finished below that on three occasions in more than a decade since. Overall, it's a fourteenth piece of silverware in his reign.
The 48-year-old native of Connecticut - who enjoyed a good playing career in the BBL as a charismatic point guard from 2000 to 2008 - has built his success on a defensive philosophy, and will have been pleased to see his team once more end the season as the BBL's meanest defence, for the fifth completed season in a row, conceding just 76.8 points per game. They held opponents to only 42% shooting from the field, led the league in defensive rebounds and blocked shots, allowed the fewest fast break points, and third fewest points in the paint; and they achieved all of that playing smart defence, giving up the third fewest fouls in the league.
At the other end of the floor, the efficiency of his offence was demonstrated by Leicester leading the BBL in field goal percentage (48.2%) as they finished second in points scored per game (87), and they got motoring in the second half of the season, scoring in excess of 90 points on 12 occasions from the end of January onwards.
Riders demonstrated great consistency throughout the campaign, much of which was built on the returns of key players to the roster he assembled, with the likes of Jamell Anderson, Corey Johnson, Darien Nelson-Henry, Mo Walker and Conner Washington all back, alongside whom he added exciting talent such as Geno Crandall and William Lee. All but Johnson and Walker - who missed much of the season through injury - made either the Molten Team of the Year, All-British Team, or Defensive Team.
In a key stretch of games, Riders bounced back from defeat to title rivals London Lions by putting on consecutive road wins at third-placed Plymouth Raiders in early January, which sparked a run of eleven straight wins and established Riders at the top of the table. After a pair of defeats, they bounced back emphatically once more with two wins in the space of three days over fellow top four rivals Newcastle Eagles and, crucially, London Lions in mid-March.
Despite that, the title race would go right down to Leicester's final game, and reverting to type they held both of their last two opponents to score totals in the sixties to lift the title on the road at Cheshire Phoenix. Those two defensive stands saw them overtake Plymouth Raiders as the league's leading defence, at a decimal point, to maintain their good run in that regard.