Greatest NBA Coaches of All Time

Eleven titles, six in Chicago and five with the Lakers, is more than any head coach in NBA history. Jackson is also the only coach to complete three separate three-peats, and across 20 seasons on the bench he never finished a year below .500.

Nine championships as Celtics head coach, including eight straight from 1959 through 1966, remain the benchmark for sustained control of a league. Auerbach drafted Chuck Cooper in 1950, started the first all-Black lineup in 1964, and handed the job to Bill Russell when he stepped away.

The NBA's all-time leader in regular-season coaching wins took San Antonio to five titles (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014) over 29 seasons. Twenty-two consecutive playoff berths from 1998 through 2019 and three Coach of the Year awards back up the ring count.

Four rings with the Showtime Lakers (1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988) and a fifth in Miami in 2006 bookend a career spent rebuilding franchises. Riley won Coach of the Year with three different teams, taking it with the Lakers in 1990, the Knicks in 1993 and the Heat in 1997.

Kundla's Minneapolis Lakers won five NBA titles between 1949 and 1954, including the league's first three-peat from 1952 to 1954. Built around George Mikan, Jim Pollard and Vern Mikkelsen, that run was pro basketball's first dynasty and it happened entirely before the shot clock.

Back-to-back championships with the Bad Boys Pistons in 1989 and 1990 required beating Michael Jordan's Bulls in the East finals both years. Daly then coached the 1992 Dream Team to gold in Barcelona, the first coach to win both an NBA title and an Olympic gold medal.

Boston reached four consecutive Finals under Jones from 1984 through 1987, winning in 1984 against the Lakers and in 1986 against Houston. He had already won eight championships as a Celtics guard, so few figures in the sport match his total haul.

Houston repeated in 1994 and 1995, with the second title arriving from the sixth seed after eliminating four straight 50-win opponents. Tomjanovich later coached the United States to gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, adding an Olympic title to the two rings.

Miami reached four straight Finals from 2011 through 2014, winning in 2012 and 2013, then returned in 2020 and again in 2023, that last run launched from the eighth seed. Spoelstra joined the Heat as a video coordinator in 1995 and was named to the NBA's list of the 15 greatest coaches in 2021.

Only head coach to win both an NCAA championship (Kansas, 1988) and an NBA championship (Detroit, 2004), the second against a heavily favored Lakers team that fell in five games. Brown also took eight different NBA franchises to the playoffs and was Coach of the Year in 2001.

Seattle's only NBA championship, in 1979, came with Wilkens on the bench a year after the same core lost Game 7 of the Finals to Washington. He retired holding the career record for coaching wins, took Coach of the Year in 1994 with Atlanta, and is enshrined as both player and coach.

The 2008 Celtics won 66 games and the title one season after going 24-58, the largest single-season turnaround in NBA history. Rivers had already taken Coach of the Year in his first season with Orlando in 2000, and he has since passed 1,000 career wins.

Philadelphia went 12-1 in the 1983 playoffs and swept the Lakers for the title, one of the most dominant postseason runs on record. Cunningham won 454 games in eight seasons for a .698 winning percentage, and he had already won a ring as a 76ers player in 1967.

Retired in 2010 as the winningest coach in league history with 1,335 regular-season victories, a mark Popovich did not pass until 2022. Nelson took Coach of the Year three times (1983, 1985 and 1992) and popularized the point forward, yet he never reached the Finals.