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The 20 Greatest NBA Coaches Poll
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


Lenny WIlkens 32 years (8 with Seattle) / 1x Coach of the Year / 1 championship (Seattle)
Career NBA 2487 1332 1155 .536

Don Nelson 29 years (11 with Milwaukee) / 3x Coach of the Year / no championships
Career NBA 2316 1309 1007 .565

Jerry Sloan 23 years (20 with Utah) / no championships
Career NBA 1888 1137 751 .602

Jack Ramsay 21 Years (10 with Portland) / 1 championship (Portland)
Career NBA 1647 864 783 .525

Rick Adelman 18 years (8 with Sacramento) / no championships
Career NBA 1397 860 537 .616

Doug Moe 15 years (10 with Denver) / 1x Coach of the Year
Career NBA 1157 628 529 .543

Slick Leonard 14 years (12 with Indiana)/ 3 championships (Indiana ABA)
Career TOT 1107 573 534 .518

Rudy Tomjanovich 13 years (12 with Houston)/ 2 championships (Houston)
Career NBA 943 527 416 .559

K.C. Jones 11 years (5 with Boston) / 2 championships (Boston)
Career TOT 858 552 306 .643

Anyone else that people feel strongly enough about to vote for as their choice for one of the greatest coaches of all time?

I think I will vote for Don Nelson here. He has been tremendously innovative and pretty successful in a number of different environments with small ball lineups, point forwards, etc. My favorite Nelson trick was when he used to have his players come down and just set up in a zone back when that was illegal; daring refs to call it . . .but his teams were well coached enough that they kept it a matchup zone and he got away with it. People do say that this kind of "gimmick" team can't win it all, but except for his Milwaukee teams (which ran into the Bird/McHale/Parish/DJ teams and the year they beat them, ran into the Moses/Erving/Toney/Cheeks Sixers) he has never had real championship talent but rather has pushed what he has to about the max it could be pushed.


Longevity . . . Nelson, Wilkens, or Sloan . . . anyone want to do a comparisom of the three?

KC Jones

K.C. Jones

Pen I think you did a great job in analyzing Nelson. He is a great coach and a brilliant basketball mind. Don't mind the selection here.

I still think it's Sloan. I've said my piece in other threads. He's one of 3 coaches to win 50 + games in 10 + season. The other 2 are both top 3 coaches respectively.

He's been to the finals twice, and lost to the greatest player of all time on both occasions.

He's coached some great talent, but the list is not that long. Mark Eaton, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Jeff Hornacek. Briefly a young Deron Williams and Boozer.

Lenny Wilkens is also a great coach. I think he overkilld his career a little bit by coaching the bad news Knicks a few years back. Also he coached well past his prime, when he coached the Raptors in the early 00s. Nonetheless he was still a good coach then. He is the most winning coach of all time, but also the most losing coach of all time. Good X's and O's guy who is very respected around the league. He deserves to go soon, but I do believe he is hanging on to his whole most winning coach ever stigma a bit too much.

The fact that the total games coached differential between Sloan and KC Jones is more than what KC Jones coached in his career, and Sloan has still maintained an above .60 winning percentage is amazing IMO.

Vote Sloan.

Lenny the great

It gets tough to put one over the other at this point, its like a crapshoot.

I guess I'll go with Sloan.

KC Jones

KC Jones 3
Jerry Sloan 2
Don Nelson 1
Lenny Wilkens 1

I really don't get all of the love for K.C. Jones, he was an average coach at best. K.C. Jones had the luxury of coaching probably the most intelligent team of all time in the Celtics. 5 players from the '86 Celtics went on to become NBA head coaches. Jones didn't coach, he managed the team. When the Celtics got old in the late 80's, they became very predictable on offense because of K.C. Jones. Jones was exposed once he left the Celtics, he was hired to be the head coach of the Sonics during the '91 season where he actually had to coach and failed. After Seattle, he was never again offered a head coaching job position. I'm sorry, K.C. Jones isn't any where near a top 10-20 coach of all-time.

My vote goes to Jerry Sloan.

If I may vote, it will be Bobby "Slick" Leonard - the greatest ABA coach ever if we compare only their ABA careers.

Also I love him standing up to Red:

http://www.remembertheaba.com/ABAArticl ... onard.html

Leonard, Auerbach fuel dying ABA-NBA verbal fire (column written in January 1976)

(SALT LAKE CITY) If the ABA and NBA were to consolidate today there would be a natural rivalry between Indiana's Bobby (Slick) Leonard and Boston's General Manager Red Auerbach.

The spat is a result of Auerbach's quote in Sports Illustrated that Leonard was a "bad coach when he was with Baltimore in the NBA and he must be a dog now too." That makes for bad blood brewing in Naptown.

"I had an expansion team in Baltimore and Auerbach was sitting in Boston with a monster," Slick pointed out. "I've been at odds with him for a long time. I never put him on a pedestal like others. I took a team of rookie players and battled his championship club to four or five point games.

"Ask Kevin Loughery (New York Nets coach) and Rod Thorn (Spirits of St. Louis coach), they were my backcourt. Check Auerbach's record before the Bill Russell era. He never won a championship. The one thing about him is what one guy said to me quite a while ago: 'He's got the biggest mouth and the strongest hands in the NBA. He held onto Russell's jersey for 13 years.'

"He can say all he wants but he was no tactician. He ran a low post with Russell -- that wasn't hard to figure out -- a fast break and with those guys (Bill Sharman, Bob Cousy, K.C. Jones, and Sam Jones) put a little pressure on the ball. There was nothing tactical from him. His comments are so ridiculous.

"The point I'm trying to make is if you can coach, fine. It still takes talent to win. There are no geniuses in this business. There are some better than others. I always considered Red Holzman (New York Knicks coach) a great coach, but he's under a different situation without Willis Reed or Dave DeBusschere. The same with Larry Costello at Milwaukee without Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson."

I will change my vote to Sloan too, I remember KC Jones with the Bullets and wasn't that impressed with him though his raw numbers will get him in very soon regardless.

New thread coming . . .