top 10 Coaches of All Time

[One_and_Done]

How about ability to coach. Does anyone think Red or Chuck Daly could coach today? It's pretty clear even Phil Jackson couldn't. But let's say we looked at it purely in-era. It's still a bad list. Kerr Is a good example of this. He's not even close to the best coach in his own era, but he's there because he happened to be the coach of a successful team. I have seen little to suggest he's better than Spo or Nurse for instance.

So you look purely at whether a coach could beat you with his guys, then turn around and take your guys and beat you with them? I think in that case, you almost have to go era-relative to a large degree. If you say a guy like Alex Hannum couldn't manage modern egos (though he was the most successful ofer the Wilt coaches along with maybe Sharman) and didn't understand how to maximize the 3 pointer (because it didn't exist), you are dinging a guy for challenges that he never got a chance to face.

The role of a coach wasn't even the same in past eras. Red and Hannum wouldn't just be struggling due to "egos", I remember a guy named Wilt with a pretty big ego too. No, they'd be clueless because they have no experience handling the sophistication of modern coaching. It would be like asking a mail clerk from the 60s to build an AI program.

[Owly]

Probably most of them don't belong.

If you're interested in the most famous coaches, this is a solid list. It certainly doesn't describe the best.

What is your criteria for best? Does it include longevity? Ability to take a team to multiple years of exceeding expectations? Innovation? Rings? I would say there are at least 6 of the guys I would put on my top 10 list, possibly more.

How about ability to coach. Does anyone think Red or Chuck Daly could coach today? It's pretty clear even Phil Jackson couldn't. But let's say we looked at it purely in-era. It's still a bad list. Kerr Is a good example of this. He's not even close to the best coach in his own era, but he's there because he happened to be the coach of a successful team. I have seen little to suggest he's better than Spo or Nurse for instance.

So the first post was intriguing and I had ... some sympathy with it. As I've said, we're working with very incomplete data about what the coach actually did, how they behaved, we only see them in limited circumstances ...

You say it "certainly doesn't describe the best" ...
But you don't offer your own list.
When asked about nuances such as longevity the response is "ability to coach" which ... doesn't feel helpful. Then there's the cross-era thing. And maybe there's some merit to doing such things in raw terms, and certainly if that's explicitly what you're doing then fine and certainly one can look at different variations on a question but at some point if one is being absolute about it ... it gets to being almost like saying "Newton sucked" because of era-intrinsic limitations on knowledge and I kind of think ... how much does that kind of "best" matter ... does it really tell us anything?

The last post seems to acknowledge that a raw terms comparison isn't fair

It would be like asking a mail clerk from the 60s to build an AI program.

... that would seem to me either a case for either era-norm relative judgements or - if one thinks the job sufficiently different as to render such a job meaningless - a case for separate era based lists.

[One_and_Done]

Breaking news; I don't think much of past NBA eras.

[OhayoKD]

It's wierd how some people who mix between era-relativity and era-adjustment for players are veering fully towards the latter when it comes to coaching evaluations.

Not to put anyone on the spot, but i'd be interesting to here the logic

[OhayoKD]

KC Jones and Steve Kerr don’t belong. Boston won a title in ‘81 with Bill Fitch. They could’ve won titles with any number of coaches with Bostons big 3. Kerr walking into a dynasty waiting to happen. He was just at the right place at the right time.

Warriors was not a dynasty waiting to happen before the 2014-2015 season.....

Co-signed.

The Warriors utterly transformed in their approach with Kerr, and that’s what made the team a champion.

Were the players ready to be contenders before that? Quite possibly, but they were getting there under Jackson, which relates to why Jackson was fired.

Whether we’re talking Kerr in GS, or Jackson in Chi or LA, obviously they had great players, but the thing to understand about their coaching is how they changed the way the talent played and in doing so created a champion.


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I'm not saying Kerr is perfect, but I feel people have overreacted to Kerr
-> maybe getting caught up to
-> struggling with the locker-room issues that tend to plague perrenial contenders/champions
-> and the warriors declining in terms of personell

and consequently retroactively underrated what Kerr offered the Warriors in his coaching "peak" so to speak.

Similar to what has happened with Westbrook I think

[Dr Positivity]

I think the count the ringz mentality with coaches is probably particularly bad, I'm going to be lower on guys like Holzman, Daly, Rudy T, Heinsohn, etc. that caught lightning in a bottle for a contending core and then played out the string in the other seasons all on the same franchise.

1. Phil Jackson - Number of complicated personalities, difficulty of 3peats and always winning with the best team make him GOAT to me

2. Red Auerbach - Even with a stacked team, 8 titles in a row including after guys starting retiring is so absurd and required superior strategy by the Celtics.

3. Alex Hannum - He has one of the great accomplishments which is being The Wilt Whisperer, plus Hawks title (and close G7 loss), ABA title and his other stops were about as good as they could've been too.

4. Pat Riley - Success on multiple teams, Lakers personalities weren't easiest and they were extremely consistent success wise.

5. Gregg Popovich - Benefitted from amazing GMing and Duncan being like a player coach, and they had some bad playoff losses, but he gets over next coach due to longevity.

6. Steve Kerr - The Warriors always seemed like it was built around his vision, and coaching Draymond was pretty hard. The first and fourth titles weren't OP. If he coaches long enough I'll put him top 4.

7. Larry Brown - He has his ring and finalist while coaching a lot of other teams to contention, but it's partly his fault he didn't see it through with other franchises.

8. Eric Spoelstra - What puts him over the top compared to the two ring coaches I mentioned is having two of most overperforming finals teams of all time in the Butler era. The Heat GMing and culture has been good, but he's part of the latter.

9. Jack Ramsey - This guy's potential dynasty got cut short but he also did a good job coaching the post Wilt Sixers to play so well without him and also being McAdoo's coach wasn't easiest, and then some more playoff teams in 80s, and he coached a long time. Hard to have better 1 ring career other than Brown.

10. John Kundlia - coached stupidly stacked team but dynasty speaks for itself.

HM - Lenny Wilkens - I wanted to put him on as he got his ring and finals contending team with the Sonics and after that didn't really have the talent to win but did a good job everywhere with Cavs reaching contention and that 90s Hawks team overperforming. But it felt wrong to bump Kundlia. Also I suppose you can downgrade the Sonics for that if they played in a more stacked era they don't get farther than his Cavs.

Adelman would be my best ringless coach but it's hard to find a place in the top 10 for him.

[Doctor MJ]

Warriors was not a dynasty waiting to happen before the 2014-2015 season.....

Co-signed.

The Warriors utterly transformed in their approach with Kerr, and that’s what made the team a champion.

Were the players ready to be contenders before that? Quite possibly, but they were getting there under Jackson, which relates to why Jackson was fired.

Whether we’re talking Kerr in GS, or Jackson in Chi or LA, obviously they had great players, but the thing to understand about their coaching is how they changed the way the talent played and in doing so created a champion.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not saying Kerr is perfect, but I feel people have overreacted to Kerr
-> maybe getting caught up to
-> struggling with the locker-room issues that tend to plague perrenial contenders/champions
-> and the warriors declining in terms of personell

and consequently retroactively underrated what Kerr offered the Warriors in his coaching "peak" so to speak.

Similar to what has happened with Westbrook I think

Definitely truth in what you say, but I'd really emphasize this:

When a coach comes into a team and fundamentally changes how the team plays, and it leads to far greater success, I think everyone should be extremely impressed by that coach by default.

One thing if you think specifically that the change in play wasn't actually that big of a factor, but if you're going to go that route, you should be really getting into the details of the schemes.

When people say that someone like Kerr just came into the right place at the right time, to me they're indicating that they are doing superficial analysis because no one should be sure that major changes like that did little.

I should also say: What would have happened to Kerr if he'd agreed to coach the Knicks? Quite possibly his coaching career never gets off the ground. Many coaches are destined to be seen as failures based on their situation rather than their capabilities. As such we don't know that the most successful coaches were the most talented coaches.

But we do know that two franchises wanted Kerr as coach for a reason, and we know that he chose the better situation because he could tell it was the better situation.

[MyUniBroDavis]

How about ability to coach. Does anyone think Red or Chuck Daly could coach today? It's pretty clear even Phil Jackson couldn't. But let's say we looked at it purely in-era. It's still a bad list. Kerr Is a good example of this. He's not even close to the best coach in his own era, but he's there because he happened to be the coach of a successful team. I have seen little to suggest he's better than Spo or Nurse for instance.

So you look purely at whether a coach could beat you with his guys, then turn around and take your guys and beat you with them? I think in that case, you almost have to go era-relative to a large degree. If you say a guy like Alex Hannum couldn't manage modern egos (though he was the most successful ofer the Wilt coaches along with maybe Sharman) and didn't understand how to maximize the 3 pointer (because it didn't exist), you are dinging a guy for challenges that he never got a chance to face.

The role of a coach wasn't even the same in past eras. Red and Hannum wouldn't just be struggling due to "egos", I remember a guy named Wilt with a pretty big ego too. No, they'd be clueless because they have no experience handling the sophistication of modern coaching. It would be like asking a mail clerk from the 60s to build an AI program.

If you give them a hot minute to Learn maybe but if ur talking drop red and hannum and give them like an off-season to prepare they’re not even good college level coaches lol

[Doctor MJ]

On the concern of coaches from the past not understanding the sophistication of today's schemes, I can't help but go back to my physics background and note that analogous reasoning would have us say that Isaac Newton isn't really a Top 10 physicist.

It's different of course when you're talking about coaches who we really don't think had much capacity for sophistication, but for the old-timers on my list (Hannum & the 2 Reds), I'm not really concerned about this.

To elaborate a bit:

Red Holzman is, I think, a great place to start because he illustrates coaching trees.

Holzman played for Harrison on the Royals.
Jackson played for Holzman on the Knicks.
Kerr played for Jackson on the Bulls.

All of these teams played motion schemes with similar philosophies that were extreme in that approaches relative to their contemporaries...but each succeeded tremendously in their own era making clear that an approach that relies on players to be able to make their own decisions on the court never stopped working so long as the players were talented enough at doing this.

Alex Hannum to me still made the shrewdest coaching move in NBA history when he told Wilt to become pass-first despite Wilt not being that great at passing and being seen as the greatest scorer in the history of the game. I think any coach who could see that back then saw the game exceptionally well.

Red Auerbach basically ran circles around the rest of the league for a quarter century as a GM. Being a great GM doesn't mean you'll be a great coach, but if you're exceptional at recognizing basketball talent of very different types, and also exceptional at figuring out how best to build and scheme around those different types, and also someone who coached successfully for quite a lot time, and also someone who was very much seen as mentor by the coaches he would later hire for that role and succeed, I think your basketball brain is pretty great.

Now, does that mean that these guys were as talented as Erik Spoelstra at all of the things Spo does nowadays? No. No way to know that. But also no way to know they couldn't do those things. It's just a different landscape now vs then.

[One_and_Done]

So you look purely at whether a coach could beat you with his guys, then turn around and take your guys and beat you with them? I think in that case, you almost have to go era-relative to a large degree. If you say a guy like Alex Hannum couldn't manage modern egos (though he was the most successful ofer the Wilt coaches along with maybe Sharman) and didn't understand how to maximize the 3 pointer (because it didn't exist), you are dinging a guy for challenges that he never got a chance to face.

The role of a coach wasn't even the same in past eras. Red and Hannum wouldn't just be struggling due to "egos", I remember a guy named Wilt with a pretty big ego too. No, they'd be clueless because they have no experience handling the sophistication of modern coaching. It would be like asking a mail clerk from the 60s to build an AI program.

If you give them a hot minute to Learn maybe but if ur talking drop red and hannum and give them like an off-season to prepare they’re not even good college level coaches lol

How is Phil Jackson 'adjusting' to the modern game goink?

[The Explorer]

The role of a coach wasn't even the same in past eras. Red and Hannum wouldn't just be struggling due to "egos", I remember a guy named Wilt with a pretty big ego too. No, they'd be clueless because they have no experience handling the sophistication of modern coaching. It would be like asking a mail clerk from the 60s to build an AI program.

If you give them a hot minute to Learn maybe but if ur talking drop red and hannum and give them like an off-season to prepare they’re not even good college level coaches lol

How is Phil Jackson 'adjusting' to the modern game goink?

I haven't seen you lay out a case for why Red Auerbach or Holzman or Jackson are bad coaches.

[B-Mitch 30]

Obviously the coaching/analytics part of the game has changed immensely since Jackson won in 2010 guys, but let's not pretend it was that long ago. The talent pool back then was about as big as it is now, and Jackson obviously knew what eFG and True Shooting were, he just wasn't able to exploit them and spacing as well as Kerr or Spoelstra have. He still did better in the 2000's than any other coach with the triangle, and I imagine a Jackson who's career started in this modern environment would do about as well.

[One_and_Done]

Obviously the coaching/analytics part of the game has changed immensely since Jackson won in 2010 guys, but let's not pretend it was that long ago. The talent pool back then was about as big as it is now, and Jackson obviously knew what eFG and True Shooting were, he just wasn't able to exploit them and spacing as well as Kerr or Spoelstra have. He still did better in the 2000's than any other coach with the triangle, and I imagine a Jackson who's career started in this modern environment would do about as well.

It's seems weird that we could call a guy who couldn't coach today 'the greatest coach ever'. Does anyone seriously think he would be good today, given the lack of understanding of the modern game he displayed in NY?

[One_and_Done]

If you give them a hot minute to Learn maybe but if ur talking drop red and hannum and give them like an off-season to prepare they’re not even good college level coaches lol

How is Phil Jackson 'adjusting' to the modern game goink?

I haven't seen you lay out a case for why Red Auerbach or Holzman or Jackson are bad coaches.

What coaches in that era did was the equivalent of saying 'get out there are run hard... make sure to pass to Wilt'. Obviously it was more sophisticated that that, but it can't compare to the modern game. Do you think Bill Russell was drawing up many x's and o's when he was player coach? It was a role so unsophisticated and undemanding that a player could do it in his spare time (a player who was clearly a terrible coach btw, based on his later stint coaching).

[SNPA]

How is Phil Jackson 'adjusting' to the modern game goink?

I haven't seen you lay out a case for why Red Auerbach or Holzman or Jackson are bad coaches.

What coaches in that era did was the equivalent of saying 'get out there are run hard... make sure to pass to Wilt'. Obviously it was more sophisticated that that, but it can't compare to the modern game. Do you think Bill Russell was drawing up many x's and o's when he was player coach? It was a role so unsophisticated and undemanding that a player could do it in his spare time (a player who was clearly a terrible coach btw, based on his later stint coaching).

Coaching squads are massive today compared to back then. There are more people in most analytics departments than used to be total number of coaches.

[LA Bird]

Not sure when it switched back but I remember Pop > Phil was the majority opinion on this board for much of the mid-late 2010s...

I know I ran a top 20 coaches of all time project a few years ago but I didn't sticky it to the Projects thread so if anyone finds it, let me know and I will.

There was no overall project thread but these are the individual links:

The 20 Greatest NBA Coaches (2009)
1. Red Auerbach
2. Phil Jackson
3. Pat Riley
4. Greg Popovich
5. Larry Brown
6. Chuck Daly
7. Red Holzman
8. John Kundla
9. Alex Hannum
10. Bill Sharman
11. Jerry Sloan
12. Don Nelson
13. Rick Adelman
14. Slick Leonard
15. K.C. Jones
16. Lenny Wilkens
17. Doug Moe
18. Billy Cunningham
19. George Karl
20. Rudy Tomjanovich

[penbeast0]

Thank you, that's what I was looking for!

[Dr Positivity]

I know I ran a top 20 coaches of all time project a few years ago but I didn't sticky it to the Projects thread so if anyone finds it, let me know and I will.

I thought that one was abandoned a few threads in due to low activity

[jalengreen]

I know I ran a top 20 coaches of all time project a few years ago but I didn't sticky it to the Projects thread so if anyone finds it, let me know and I will.

I thought that one was abandoned a few threads in due to low activity

He was referring to one in 2009, the OP in this thread was edited to include that ranking

[Doctor MJ]

Not sure when it switched back but I remember Pop > Phil was the majority opinion on this board for much of the mid-late 2010s...

I know I ran a top 20 coaches of all time project a few years ago but I didn't sticky it to the Projects thread so if anyone finds it, let me know and I will.

There was no overall project thread but these are the individual links:

The 20 Greatest NBA Coaches (2009)
1. Red Auerbach
2. Phil Jackson
3. Pat Riley
4. Greg Popovich
5. Larry Brown
6. Chuck Daly
7. Red Holzman
8. John Kundla
9. Alex Hannum
10. Bill Sharman
11. Jerry Sloan
12. Don Nelson
13. Rick Adelman
14. Slick Leonard
15. K.C. Jones
16. Lenny Wilkens
17. Doug Moe
18. Billy Cunningham
19. George Karl
20. Rudy Tomjanovich

First, thanks for sharing the list and the links!

It's very interesting to think back to how we perceived things back then. (I don't think I was involved with this project, but I feel like I probably would have largely been aligned with the group if I did.)

You mention the Pop > Phil period in the 2010s, in contrast to the Phil > Pop on this list. Indeed, in 2009 the Spurs seemed like they were on their last legs - while Phil's Lakers were contending for - and about to win - more titles. After 2014 though, the tide turned with a massive appreciation for the unexpected success playing beautiful basketball.

I wouldn't say it's necessarily clear to me where perception about Phil vs Pop is at the moment, but I'll acknowledge that that I'm not quite as high on Pop now as I was then, and while at one time I'd have sided with Pop, I think I'd go with Phil at this time.

The guy who jumped out to me from the 2009 list is Larry Brown at #5. I remember Brown's reputation in the wake of the 2004 championship, and yeah, he definitely had the reputation as the smartest coach in all the land. Even then his mercurial nature kept him from being a true coaching GOAT contender, but it was likely a situation where Brown was effectively slotted in below only the guys in the very top tier.

For the record in my Shares list Brown is tied at 13th with Daly. I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that him scoring that low means that I wouldn't have him in my Top 10 now (or theoretically still Top 5) - I don't value the simplistic measure that much. And yet, when going through the process I did in my earlier post, I didn't even really think about him then, and I can't say I feel a need to go back and change it now that he's in mind. That seems telling.

Perhaps the debate to focus on here would be Brown vs D'Antoni. There I'm siding with D'Antoni, but my guess would be most would still side with Brown. I'd imagine that would be different for some if D'Antoni won the chip instead of Brown, but as I've said, I don't think there was anything fundamentally keeping D'Antoni's teams from titles.