CBS Ranking every Coach 2025

[cupcakesnake]

Link to full article here.

Someone posted this in another thread, but I feel it's worthy of it's own discussion. Sam Quinn's rankings and tiers were:

Tier 1: The undisputed king
1. Erik Spolestra
Tier 2: The elites
2. Nick Nurse
3. Rick Carlisle
4. Steve Kerr
5. Ty Lue
Tier 3: The Wunderkinds
6. Mark Daigneault
7. Will Hardy
Tier 4: Obvious floor-raisers
8. Ime Udoka
9. Mike Budenholzer
10. Tom Thibodeau
11. Joe Mazzula
12. Chris Finch
13. Mike Brown
Tier 5: The living legend
14. Gregg Popovich
Tier 6: Middle of the road
15. Mike Malone
16. Quin Snyder
17. Taylor Jenkins
18. Jason Kidd
Tier 7: You look promising, but it's still a tad early
19. Jamahl Mosley
20. Willie Green
21. Kenny Atkinson
Tier 8: I wouldn't be enthused
22. Doc Rivers
23. JB Bickerstaff
24. Billy Donovan
25. Chauncey Billups
Tier 9: We don't know enough
26. Darko Rajakovic
27. Jordi Frenandez
28. Charles Lee
29. Brian Keefe
30. JJ Redick

He also provided his criteria, which is always appreciated in something this difficult to evaluate:

- Track record. This is obvious. A great coach tends to win a lot of games in the regular season and advance deep into the postseason.

- Performance against expectations. Sometimes, a great coach is stricken with a limited roster. Can he make lemonade out of those lemons? Some coaches happen to consistently find themselves with elite talent. What does it say about them if they can't make the most of it?

- Points of emphasis. Do your teams take the right kinds of shots? Do they allow the right kinds of shots? Do you have ways of generating turnovers without excessive fouling? Do you balance rebounding and transition on both ends of the floor? Essentially, is your team doing the right things on paper? Are you plucking the low-hanging fruit?

- Creativity. Have you found unorthodox uses for under-valued players? Are there things that you do that other coaches don't? Can you draw up a nice out-of-bounds play?

- Player development. Do your draft picks pan out? Do you find productive players on the margins? Do players leave your team and get better? Do players leave your team and get worse?

- Rotation management. Are you playing the right players? Are you overusing your best players? Are you underusing them? Do you have specific lineup quirks that help or hurt your team consistently?

- People management. Do your players like you? Do they play hard for you? Are you operating in lockstep with your GM? Are you constantly battling with ownership? Can you manage the politics of your locker room?

[xxSnEaKyPxx]

Putting Pop that low is absurd.

Talent wins out nearly always in the NBA. You can give the best coach in the league the worst roster and they are going to be one of the worst teams. Pop has proven to be an amazing coach throughout his career. He’s not suddenly an average coach because he has a terrible roster.

[One_and_Done]

Coaching ranks are fickle. When the Spurs are winning 50 games again thanks to Wemby, Pop will suddenly be a top 5 or 10 coach again. Is there really any difference between Pop at 14 and Kerr at 4? I doubt it.

[JujitsuFlip]

Bickerstaff ranked a little too high.

[babyjax13]

My attempt:

Tier 1: The undisputed king
1. Erick Spoelstra

Tier 2: The innovators
2. Mark Daigneault
3. Ty Lue
4. Rick Carlisle

Tier 3: Body of work > recent results
5. Gregg Popovich
6. Steve Kerr
7. Mike Budenholzer

Tier 4: Reliable results
8. Tom Thibodeau
9. Mike Brown
10. Mike Malone

Tier 5: Innovators with a small body of work
11. Chris Finch
12. Ime Udoka
13. Will Hardy
14. Joe Mazzula

Tier 6: Probably too low, but what have you done for me lately?
15. Quin Snyder
16. Nick Nurse
17. Kenny Atkinson

Tier 7: You could do better, but you could do much, much worse
18. Jason Kidd
19. Taylor Jenkins
20. Billy Donovan

Tier 7: You look promising, but it's still a tad early
21. Jamahl Mosley
22. Willie Green

Tier 8: I'm not sure Detroit should hire you
23. JB Bickerstaff
24. Doc Rivers
25. Chauncey Billups

Tier 9: TBA
Darko Rajakovic
Jordi Frenandez
Charles Lee
Brian Keefe
JJ Redick

[AleksandarN]

Garbage list with Pop Malone at 14 and 15

[cupcakesnake]

Putting Pop that low is absurd.

Coaching ranks are fickle. When the Spurs are winning 50 games again thanks to Wemby, Pop will suddenly be a top 5 or 10 coach again. Is there really any difference between Pop at 14 and Kerr at 4? I doubt it.

Garbage list with Pop Malone at 14 and 15

In the article he says Pop is the greatest coach of all-time and wouldn't mind any list that has Pop at #1.

If you want to grandfather Popovich into the No. 1 spot eternally, well, I won't stop you. He might even be underrated historically. But there are coaches I'd consider better attuned to the modern sport than he is.

He just has some questions about Pop's recent work. He gives some amount of detail in the article.

I personally don't know where to rank Pop today based on the Derozan/Aldridge era and everything that's come after. If the Spurs try to be competitive this year, we might get a Pop-renaissance that legitimizes his purgatory that has lasted almost a decade. Like surely you don't want to rank Pop #1, but who do you decide to put him over or under. I kind of get Sam Quinn's decision to create a Pop line right in the middle.

[ImSlower]

Spoelstra has had such a superb career so far. I remember when he came out of nowhere as a video coordinator, then suddenly was being hailed as the guy who fixed D-Wade's shot, Riley's hand-picked successor, then somehow manages the huge personalities of James, Bosh and Wade and wins some rings. Crazy to think that he could easily coach for twenty more years. He's already one of the best ever and has a long way to go.

[AleksandarN]

Putting Pop that low is absurd.

Coaching ranks are fickle. When the Spurs are winning 50 games again thanks to Wemby, Pop will suddenly be a top 5 or 10 coach again. Is there really any difference between Pop at 14 and Kerr at 4? I doubt it.

Garbage list with Pop Malone at 14 and 15

In the article he says Pop is the greatest coach of all-time and wouldn't mind any list that has Pop at #1.

If you want to grandfather Popovich into the No. 1 spot eternally, well, I won't stop you. He might even be underrated historically. But there are coaches I'd consider better attuned to the modern sport than he is.

He just has some questions about Pop's recent work. He gives some amount of detail in the article.

I personally don't know where to rank Pop today based on the Derozan/Aldridge era and everything that's come after. If the Spurs try to be competitive this year, we might get a Pop-renaissance that legitimizes his purgatory that has lasted almost a decade. Like surely you don't want to rank Pop #1, but who do you decide to put him over or under. I kind of get Sam Quinn's decision to create a Pop line right in the middle.

No excuse having Malone at 15 I mean come on.

[Klomp]

Fun fact:

When Chris Finch took over the Minnesota Timberwolves midseason coming from a different organization as his first NBA head coaching job, he took a team that was 7-24 (.226) and finished 16-25 (.390). After he lost his first 5 career games going into the all-star break, they went 16-20 after the break. In this three full seasons since, his teams are 244-102 (.585), roughly the career win percentages of Tyronn Lue, Erik Spoelstra and Doc Rivers.

I know there are a lot of good coaches, but 12th is kind of a joke, yet at the same time is indicative of the NBA media landscape's longstanding biases against small-market organizations.

[cupcakesnake]

Putting Pop that low is absurd.

Coaching ranks are fickle. When the Spurs are winning 50 games again thanks to Wemby, Pop will suddenly be a top 5 or 10 coach again. Is there really any difference between Pop at 14 and Kerr at 4? I doubt it.

Garbage list with Pop Malone at 14 and 15

In the article he says Pop is the greatest coach of all-time and wouldn't mind any list that has Pop at #1.

If you want to grandfather Popovich into the No. 1 spot eternally, well, I won't stop you. He might even be underrated historically. But there are coaches I'd consider better attuned to the modern sport than he is.

He just has some questions about Pop's recent work. He gives some amount of detail in the article.

I personally don't know where to rank Pop today based on the Derozan/Aldridge era and everything that's come after. If the Spurs try to be competitive this year, we might get a Pop-renaissance that legitimizes his purgatory that has lasted almost a decade. Like surely you don't want to rank Pop #1, but who do you decide to put him over or under. I kind of get Sam Quinn's decision to create a Pop line right in the middle.

No excuse having Malone at 15 I mean come on.

I like Malone better than Thibs and Mike Brown. I think Will Hardy has been pretty mind blowing by maybe needs to "prove it" by actually coaching a real team to wins for a full season. Udoka I still feel I'd like to see more of. I think you could argue him over Finch. So basically I could personally argue for Malone as high as 10. I also don't like Lue, so I could go 9 for Malone.

I dunno... I don't think he thinks Malone is bad or average. There's just 14 guys he likes even more. I think there's at least 22 really good coaches in the league, and Malone is among them. Where would you rank him, and who do you specifically rank him above?

[HadAnEffectHere]

Udoka really doesn't get penalized enough for managing to get fired for sexual harassment the season after his team made the Finals.

He's pretty clearly an unstable weirdo who you can't count on long-term which does matter.

Hardy at 7 is so funny. He can't get anyone to play hard and his defensive scheme makes no sense. Those two combined to produce the worst defense in NBA history last year.

[azcatz11]

Taylor Jenkins is top 5 easy.

[whatisacenter]

I like Coach Spo a lot and he would be at the top of my list with others but not all by himself.

The Heat do tend to get the most out of their roster which is a credit to him and the FO but he went 2-2 in the finals with the Heatles losing to an undermanned Mavs team and has only made it back to the finals once since then losing in the bubble.

Again, I respect the guy and wouldn't hesitate to have him to coach my team but I think he gets a little overrated.

[bkkrh]

Pretty dumb list and pretty dumb criterias. So somehow Mark Daigneault is by having ONE season with a winning record that resulted in a 2nd round exit in 4 seasons as a NBA head coach 1 tier above Steve Kerr and Popovich? 3 tiers over Joe Mazzulla, who just won a title in his 2nd season as head coach and currently has the best winning record of all time because of his small body of work? Kidd is 18th after making it to the Conference Finals and the Finals in the last 3 seasons? Billy Donovan is bad because he only wins about 40 games with a Chicago team that constantly has about 2 of their starters/star players injured for 3 seasons now and was viewed as one of the surprise teams in 21-22 before the injury issues started?

Track record. This is obvious. A great coach tends to win a lot of games in the regular season and advance deep into the postseason.

This would be a good criteria, but seems all over the place.

- Performance against expectations. Sometimes, a great coach is stricken with a limited roster. Can he make lemonade out of those lemons? Some coaches happen to consistently find themselves with elite talent. What does it say about them if they can't make the most of it?

So a coach gets rewarded for overachieving, but a coach that never was in this situation might get punished for that? Should it speak against Popovich that he had 20 seasons in a row where he won 50+ games?

Points of emphasis. Do your teams take the right kinds of shots? Do they allow the right kinds of shots? Do you have ways of generating turnovers without excessive fouling? Do you balance rebounding and transition on both ends of the floor? Essentially, is your team doing the right things on paper? Are you plucking the low-hanging fruit?

How can you evaluate this? Did he watch all 82 games of each team, or did he go per stats? If so which stats? Is this not also mostly related to the talent of the players on the floor? Is Flip Saunders at fault for the Shaqting a fool moments of Javale McGee?

- Creativity. Have you found unorthodox uses for under-valued players? Are there things that you do that other coaches don't? Can you draw up a nice out-of-bounds play?

What is an example of an unorthodox use for an under-valued player? Does it maybe make a difference again if I'm a head coach of a contender filled with veteran All Stars, or the head coach of the process 76ers? Again, how does he know who can draw out a nice out of bounds play? Did he watch them from all coaches?

- Player development. Do your draft picks pan out? Do you find productive players on the margins? Do players leave your team and get better? Do players leave your team and get worse?

The coach is not drafting the players. The coach is not signing the free agents. How can I compare coaches from winning franchises that get late 1st rounders on stacked teams to coaches that went through a rebuild and had teams loaded with young talent, where logically some of them developed into starters? Does it count towards a coach if f. e. the Lakers sign a bunch of former top 20 draft picks like Cam Reddish, Jaxson Hayes, Lonnie Walker IV or Rui Hachimura for a relatively low salary and some of them work out, while about 25 other teams aren't able to sign the same level of talent for a similar salary and contract? Does it speak against or for the Mavericks that Jalen Brunson has become an MVP candidate within 2 season in New York, while he was actually a 2nd rounder that was constantly improving in Dallas as well. What about Isaiah Tomas after leaving Boston?

- People management. Do your players like you? Do they play hard for you? Are you operating in lockstep with your GM? Are you constantly battling with ownership? Can you manage the politics of your locker room?

How to you know that? Do you base it on the one player that talked bad about the coach after he left? How do you know the relationship of trainer and GM? Does it not also matter who the GM is? Is it maybe a bit easier to work with R. C. Buford than with Isiah Thomas? Same for ownership, I'd definitely prefer to be the coach of Mark Cuban than the coach of James Dolan or Donald Sterling.

[NotaHypeJob]

Popovich today is easily a bottom 5 coach, his legendary status as a top 3 atg coach is the only thing saving people from realizing how clownish he's been for multiple years now

[Kurtz]

I like these tiers but less so the rankings. Ie Nurse good but surely not 2. Bud and especially Pop way too low as well. I mean you can argue Pop at #2.

[TheGOATRises007]

Donovan isn't great, but there's no shot him and Billups are in the same tier.

[xxSnEaKyPxx]

I will say, Rick Carlisle has an absurdly large resume at this point. Dude has succeeding in 3 different decades now, while making the conference finals with 4 entirely different rosters, all of which, had pretty differing styles of play. Not to mention taking down the Heat, being one of the biggest upsets I’ve ever seen in the Finals. I know he’s always gotten some credit from a lot of people, but dudes had a lot of haters too.

[TheHartBreakKid]

There is zero logic or consistency regarding this list.

This is the definition of a clickbait article, taking advantage of the fact that basketball fans are feinding for any content at this point in the offseason.