Does Steve Kerr have the most well-rounded basketball career ever?

[giordunk]

Pre-NBA
Elite college basketball player (2nd team All-American)
Won gold at 1986 FIBA with Team USA

Playing career
Was never an NBA star, but still:
Played 15 season in the NBA
Still the all-time 3-point percentage leader
5-time champion
Part of the 72-10

Post-NBA
Multiple years broadcasting on TNT
In-game commentary for NBA Live and NBA 2K
GM of the Phoenix Suns

Coaching Career
4x Champion
Coached the 73-9 team
Revolutionized how the game was played.

Other candidates

Michael Jordan - GOAT career, GOAT business, not good team owner
Jerry West - HOF career, HOF front office (Kobe/Shaq Lakers, Grit n Grind Grizzlies, Curry-era Warriors)
Charles Barkley - HOF Career, HOF broadcaster

[eminence]

I’d probably go John Wooden.

[Jaivl]

Charles Barkley - HOF Career, HOF broadcaster

ehhhhhhhhhhhhh

I'm missing Bill Walton, who's actually a HOF broadcaster, HOF NBA career with two championships on two completely different roles, plus has a vastly superior college run than basically everybody else (not that I care much about that).

[Texas Chuck]

Don Nelson deserves a shout
Lenny Wilkens
Larry Bird

[rand]

Also a gold medal in 2020 as an assistant coach at the Olympics in Tokyo and another gold as head coach at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

[sp6r=underrated]

Doc rivers
Far better player
Far worse coach
Similar GM (both stunk)
Similar Announcer (both fine)

I'd say they're similar in roundness

[Doctor MJ]

I’d probably go John Wooden.

Great call.


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[Doctor MJ]

I’d say Jerry West.

Coaching career is limited of course, but it’s a bit different when you go from coach to GM of the same franchise and have tremendous success there for a long time.


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[taikibansei]

Phil Jackson deserves consideration as well:

As player:

2× NBA champion (1970, 1973)
NBA All-Rookie First Team (1968)
2× First-team Division II All-American (1966, 1967)
2× NCC Player of the Year (1966, 1967)
3× First-team All-NCC (1965–1967)

As head coach:

11× NBA champion (1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009, 2010)
4× NBA All-Star Game head coach (1992, 1996, 2000, 2009)
NBA Coach of the Year (1996)
CBA champion (1984)
CBA Coach of the Year (1985)

That said, I refuse to discuss his tenure as Knicks' president....

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Gonna throw Pat Riley into the ring

As a player:
Went to NCAA national championship game with Kentucky in 1966 as their leading scorer(lost to UCLA)
Won championship with the Lakers in 72
Went to the Finals with the Lakers in 73
Went to the Finals with the Suns in 76

As an assistant coach:
Won a championship with the Lakers in 1980.

As a head coach:
Won four championships and went to 7 Finals with Lakers in the 80s, plus an additional WCF in 1986
Went to the Finals with NYK in 1994 and the ECF in 1993.
Went to the ECF with the Mourning heat in 1997
Won championship with the Heat in 2006

As a GM/POBO:
Has run the Heat for 30 years, taking over an expansion franchise that had only existed for six years and accomplished very little, and in that time has built four different contending cores(Mourning/Hardaway/Mashburn, Wade/Shaq, Heatles, Jimmy/Bam/etc) that won three championships and made seven Finals and made ten ECF. Also developed Spo as an assistant and hired him.

He also had a brief periods as a commentator between his retirement as a player and joining the Lakers' coaching staff, and again between the Lakers and the Knicks in the 1990-91 season.

[Cavsfansince84]

I’d probably go John Wooden.

Great call.


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To me its hard to put Wooden up there with the degree of cheating that enabled it all. Wooden still seems like a great guy/coach(and believe me I've heard/read quite a bit about him) but the booster interference puts something of a damper on all the success. I don't think you can single him out as above all others with it.

[eminence]

I’d probably go John Wooden.

Great call.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

To me its hard to put Wooden up there with the degree of cheating that enabled it all. Wooden still seems like a great guy/coach(and believe me I've heard/read quite a bit about him) but the booster interference puts something of a damper on all the success. I don't think you can single him out as above all others with it.

The playing career gap between Wooden (the first 3x college All-American, and 1st team All league in the NBL) and a guy like Red or even Kerr is just gigantic though.

[Cavsfansince84]

The playing career gap between Wooden (the first 3x college All-American, and 1st team All league in the NBL) and a guy like Red or even Kerr is just gigantic though.

Be that as it is I still think when a guy's coaching career is known for having one of the biggest scandals hanging over it(which went on for years and years) that he is most known for its hard to say he had the greatest career of anyone in the history of bb. Not that you have to agree or w/e but that's my opinion. I don't think Kerr is above West and a few others either fwiw. Kerr isn't some legendary player. He was very fortunate to play on teams that won titles but that he was a role player on. West is the logo and also generally seen as a top 2 gm of all time. Also a coach but didn't really do much so not worth mentioning.

[eminence]

The playing career gap between Wooden (the first 3x college All-American, and 1st team All league in the NBL) and a guy like Red or even Kerr is just gigantic though.

Be that as it is I still think when a guy's coaching career is known for having one of the biggest scandals hanging over it(which went on for years and years) that he is most known for its hard to say he had the greatest career of anyone in the history of bb. Not that you have to agree or w/e but that's my opinion. I don't think Kerr is above West and a few others either fwiw. Kerr isn't some legendary player. He was very fortunate to play on teams that won titles but that he was a role player on. West is the logo and also generally seen as a top 2 gm of all time. Also a coach but didn't really do much so not worth mentioning.

I guess we'll all value the Gilbert stuff differently. But frankly I see it pretty similarly to PED suspensions/allegations for current players.

It's A) against the rules B) anyone remotely competitive is using it when necessary

[Cavsfansince84]

I guess we'll all value the Gilbert stuff differently. But frankly I see it pretty similarly to PED suspensions/allegations for current players.

It's A) against the rules B) anyone remotely competitive is using it when necessary

I can see why you'd see it that way but my issue is with it is that 1. yes, plenty of college fb/bb programs have been paying players under the table going back to the 40's if not earlier but not all of them were. 2. Not all were paying as much as ucla was. 3. The amount of talent ucla brought in it was pretty ridiculous. Just look at the drafts from like 65-75 and its full of ucla players so I think an unfair advantage was gained through it.

[eminence]

I guess we'll all value the Gilbert stuff differently. But frankly I see it pretty similarly to PED suspensions/allegations for current players.

It's A) against the rules B) anyone remotely competitive is using it when necessary

I can see why you'd see it that way but my issue is with it is that 1. yes, plenty of college fb/bb programs have been paying players under the table going back to the 40's if not earlier but not all of them were. 2. Not all were paying as much as ucla was. 3. The amount of talent ucla brought in it was pretty ridiculous. Just look at the drafts from like 65-75 and its full of ucla players so I think an unfair advantage was gained through it.

I've never read anywhere of Gilbert being involved back to '65. I believe the starting point was in 1967 and he got involved to make sure KAJ/Allen didn't transfer between '67 and '68 (Kareem claims he wouldn't have transferred; Allen says Gilbert got him to stay the extra year before going pro after his junior season).

So Wooden had already won 3 titles in 4 seasons prior to Gilberts involvement to the best of my knowledge. Two around Goodrich in '64/'65 (and Hazzard in '64), and then KAJs sophomore season. Already in the college coach Mount Rushmore discussion at that point. If Kareem is telling the truth and he wouldn't have transferred I consider 5 in 6 a near certainty.

Speculation around boosters other than Gilbert feels spurious.

[Doctor MJ]

I’d probably go John Wooden.

Great call.


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To me its hard to put Wooden up there with the degree of cheating that enabled it all. Wooden still seems like a great guy/coach(and believe me I've heard/read quite a bit about him) but the booster interference puts something of a damper on all the success. I don't think you can single him out as above all others with it.

Hmm so:

1. I want to also emphasized that Wooden was a big time player. I might related his level of stand-out-ness as a pro in his day to be something like Jason Kidd.

2. I do think we need to remember that abuses where backers gave benefits to star athletes were common as the dirt back in the day, and today all of this is done basically out in the open.

3. Given the location of UCLA and the fact that Los Angeles is literally the epicenter of the modern NBA, I think it's important not to underrate how much of the significance of the location made something like this - either UCLA or USC emerging as a powerhouse - probably inevitable. That in some ways should make it something to factor in as an unfair advantage when attempting to evaluate the value of Wooden the coach distinct from the broader basketball program. Gail Goodrich, Bill Walton, Marques Johnson? These are SoCal boys.

Lew Alcindor, lka Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was of course the big get because in addition to being the greatest of them all, and he was from NYC. Kareem was also an extremely intelligent Black man from Harlem who didn't exactly feel like going over to St. John's in Queens (the big-time NYC college program of the era) was "staying home", specifically said he liked how the people in Los Angeles treated - and later would come back to the city as a pro. While acknowledging that Kareem also liked the idea of going to the Knicks - who are on based in Manhattan which contains Harlem - I think the broader thing here is that given Kareem felt he needed to leave Milwaukee because of the cultural reasons, I really doubt he came to UCLA simply because they paid the biggest bribe under the table.

[Cavsfansince84]

Hmm so:

1. I want to also emphasized that Wooden was a big time player. I might related his level of stand-out-ness as a pro in his day to be something like Jason Kidd.

2. I do think we need to remember that abuses where backers gave benefits to star athletes were common as the dirt back in the day, and today all of this is done basically out in the open.

3. Given the location of UCLA and the fact that Los Angeles is literally the epicenter of the modern NBA, I think it's important not to underrate how much of the significance of the location made something like this - either UCLA or USC emerging as a powerhouse - probably inevitable. That in some ways should make it something to factor in as an unfair advantage when attempting to evaluate the value of Wooden the coach distinct from the broader basketball program. Gail Goodrich, Bill Walton, Marques Johnson? These are SoCal boys.

Lew Alcindor, lka Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was of course the big get because in addition to being the greatest of them all, and he was from NYC. Kareem was also an extremely intelligent Black man from Harlem who didn't exactly feel like going over to St. John's in Queens (the big-time NYC college program of the era) was "staying home", specifically said he liked how the people in Los Angeles treated - and later would come back to the city as a pro. While acknowledging that Kareem also liked the idea of going to the Knicks - who are on based in Manhattan which contains Harlem - I think the broader thing here is that given Kareem felt he needed to leave Milwaukee because of the cultural reasons, I really doubt he came to UCLA simply because they paid the biggest bribe under the table.

Ok but at the same time I didn't say that KAJ most of the players went there strictly for the money and I already know he was a stand out player back in the 30's. I mean I get you feel obligated to try and rebut what I said but at the same time I don't think being a stand out pro in the 1930's plus likely the goat cbb coach(where we do know that a scandal did occur not that it was the only program to be involved in that sort of thing) doesn't necessarily make for the greatest bb career of all time. That's just me giving my own personal opinion on a bb message board. Not that you or anyone else must agree with me. It's a very subjective thing.

[SNPA]

Pre-NBA
Elite college basketball player (2nd team All-American)
Won gold at 1986 FIBA with Team USA

Playing career
Was never an NBA star, but still:
Played 15 season in the NBA
Still the all-time 3-point percentage leader
5-time champion
Part of the 72-10

Post-NBA
Multiple years broadcasting on TNT
In-game commentary for NBA Live and NBA 2K
GM of the Phoenix Suns

Coaching Career
4x Champion
Coached the 73-9 team
Revolutionized how the game was played.

Other candidates

Michael Jordan - GOAT career, GOAT business, not good team owner
Jerry West - HOF career, HOF front office (Kobe/Shaq Lakers, Grit n Grind Grizzlies, Curry-era Warriors)
Charles Barkley - HOF Career, HOF broadcaster

Bird. Not that close.

[Cavsfansince84]

I'd say it goes something like

West/Riley

Phil Jax/Red/Popovich

Bird/Kerr/Sharman/Wooden/Brown/Wilkens/Nelson/Heinsohn in w/e order