RealGM

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
11. Jerry Sloan
12. Don Nelson
13. Rick Adelman
14. Slick Leonard
15. K.C. Jones

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

Bill Fitch 25 years (9 with Cleveland) / 2x Coach of the Year / 1 championship (Boston)
Career NBA 2050 944 1106 .460

George Karl 21 years (7 with Seatlle) / no championshipos
Career NBA 1575 933 642 .592

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

Mike Fratello 16 years (7 with Atlanta) / No championships
Career NBA 1215 667 548 .549

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

Hubie Brown 15 years (5 with ATL/NYK) / 1 championship (Kentucky ABA)
Career TOT 1087 528 559 .486

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

Billy Cunningham 8 years (all in Philly) / 1 championship
Career NBA 650 454 196 .698

Bill Russell 8 years (5 in Seattle) / 2 championships (as player/coach in Boston)
Career NBA 631 341 290 .540

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

I am seriously tempted to go with Doug Moe, my favorite all time coach. KC Jones and Billy Cunningham are the greatest for their short stretches but they are really short. Lenny Wilkens was never spectacular but to me was better than Fitch or Ramsey for the longer run coaches. I could also see Moe or Tomjanovich.

I am torn between Moe, who seemed to make silk purses out of more cow ears (Lever, Adams, Dunn, Hanslick, Vincent, Schayes, etc.) as well as getting the best out of his talent like English, Issel, Vandeweghe, Natt, etc.; Wilkens for his professionalism and longevity, or Cunningham for his short but super high efficiency run. For now, I will go with Lenny Wilkens.

i think you're overrating moe a tad bit, and have been for a while. The development of Fat Lever & co. have a lot more to do with the individuals themselves rather than a result of coaching. Also, English, Issel, and Kiki were great players in their own right. Scoring boukou buckets with that squad is comparable to D'Antoni working with Nash/Stoudemire/Marion.

I'm torn between Rudy T and George Karl.

Karl, to me, is a model of consistency. He's coached some serious talent over the years but none of them are good enough to be #1 options of a finals team. GP, Shawn Kemp, Glenn Robinson, Ray Allen, Carmelo Anthony... it's no surprise that he never got past the MJ's and Tim Duncans of the league to win the big one.

Rudy on the other hand, his accomplishment is most clearly defined in the 94-95 season where he took a good/not great Rockets team and somehow won back-to-back titles in the face of Barkley, Shaq, the aforementioned Sonics, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, a host of other mid90's players that were shut out from championship-land b/c of MJ and Hakeem. It's my KC Jones argument but rehashed a decade later.

So if you twisted my arm, Rudy T because he has the ring(s).

And how good was Nash in Dallas? A marginal All-Star at best rather than a 2 time MVP. And it's the sheer amount of talent Moe rescued from the scrap heap that impresses me . . . .

look at Lever under Jack Ramsey (probably one of the 20 greatest coaches too) . . . he was ordinary, not a great rebounder, not great per minute stats. Moe saw he had unusual potential and reversed his offense to let guards Lever and Dunn crash the boards while his big men who were weak rebounders (Issel and Vandeweghe) drew the opposing big men away from the basket. Simple you say? And yet guys like Ramsey, a truly great coach, didn't find it. Instead they used Vandeweghe as SF where he was too slow to guard anyone but his scoring and lack of rebounding wouldn't hurt the team as much.

look at Michael Adams. Two small to play the two (under 6'), not a great passer or defender, couldn't get his shot off in traffic, at best for another coach he would be John Paxson . . . a part time role player (and he wasn't nearly as conventionally good player as Paxson). Moe picked him up off waivers when his prior team failed to make him fit the conventional PG mold and made him the SG next to Lever and he scored 26 ppg basically off 3 pointers and faking the 3 pointers to drive and pull up.

Moe did this with a number of players. TR Dunn -- great body and work ethic but a guard but no handles and a Shaq caliber outside shot -- useless to most coaches, became an All-D guard under Moe. This happened again and again. And I can't think of a SINGLE PLAYER who improved appreciably after he left Moe's team -- despite all the failed first round draft choices that Denver had (and they were a TERRIBLE drafting team). Moe got all he could out of his talent. He wasn't the most brilliant bench coach or clinician but Doug Moe was one of the great outside the box thinkers.

Oh, and this time I voted for Lenny Wilkens though if there are more Moe voters out there, I could switch back.

Rudy Tomjanovich

Rudy t.

IMO, Wilkins does not belong in the top 20 all time. There was nothing special about the losingest coach of all time.

I'm gonna go with Lenny Wilkens. For starters, he's about a million times better than Rudy T, who should not touch the top 20 with a 10 foot pole. IMO, he wasn't even top 20 for his own generation. A decidedly mediocre coach, who gets over rated because he won two rings.

I'm a Rockets fan and I'll tell your first hand that Rudy T. is an overrated coach. This guy is more about hyping his team up, giving good speeches, and having his players play with passion than he is with coaching. I think he's highly overrated, and he's a terrible decision maker---influencing contracts like Kelvin Cato (7 years 42 million), Mo taylor (7 years, 49 million), and Moochie Norris (5 years 22 million). I'm not bashing him, as a fan I'm greatful for everything he's done for the Rockets organization in the past, but he's very overrated by the general consensus.

He had a big hand in firing up his players though in those two tittle runs---being down 0-2 in the finals and coming back to win the entire thing in 7, being down 3-1 in the 2nd round against the Suns in '95 and coming back to win it all in 7---like I said, he's a great motivator, but I don't think his coaching schemes wern't anything special (dump the ball into Hakeem).

Vote: Billy Cunningham

Lenny Wilkens 2
Rudy Tomjanovich 2
Billy Cunningham 1

IMO Cunningham has to go here.

Billy C has that great W-L and the "fo fo fo" title team . . . but, (1)he quit coaching after only 8 years and has never shown any interest in going back and

(2) a team that had peak Moses Malone, Julius Erving, Bobby Jones, Maurice Cheeks (and sometimes Andrew Toney) . . . people think they should have been able to get past Boston more than once . . . that's an ATL team talentwise and able to match up even with the Bird/McHale/Parish Celtics so it was a disappointment that they weren't able to repeat (or get there earlier with Erving/McGinnis/Caldwell Jones/Dawkins/etc.).

I still think he deserves to be considered here and may switch my vote to him if there is still a tie tomorrow morning but those are the negatives.

Lenny Wilkens.

Again I'm going with Jack Ramsay and again, he's going to suffer a defeat... I'm starting to wonder if he'll end up in the top 20.