In today’s NBA, we cherish those coaches who win. Not only that, but coaches who win the Big One: a Gregg Popovich, a Phil Jackson, an Erik Spoelstra. If a coach is ring-less, they’re somehow lacking something — usually unquantifiable. So we thought it only fair to bring you five current NBA coaches (sorry George), without a — capital T — Title on their coaching resume, but who fans should be happy to see patrolling their team’s sideline.
Part of the problem with ascribing coaching “talent” to only those coaches who win titles is the dearth of title-winning coaches. Here is the entire list of title-winning coaches dating back to 1980: Popovich, Spoelstra, the Zen Master, Rick Carlisle, Pat Riley, Doc Rivers, Larry Brown, Rudy Tomjanovich, Chuck Daly, Bill Fitch, Paul Westhead, Billy Cunningham, K.C. Jones, and…that’s it. In the last 33 years of the NBA, 13 coaches — total — have won an NBA Title.
A lot of this is due to the monopoly by Popovich, Jackson and Riley over the last 33 years. Combined, they’ve won 20 of the last 33 titles. Of those 13 coaches that have led their teams to the Promised Land in the last 33 years, 6 of them have, as-yet, failed to win a second: Carlisle (still active), Westhead, Cunningham, Doc (still active) Brown and Fitch. The point of this little trip down memory lane? It’s really hard to win an NBA title, and those that do generally do again if they’ve got the same squad to work with.
That last point isn’t exactly a revelation. There are 30 teams in the NBA today, in 1980 there were 22, but only one gets to win each year. And for those other coaches who captured more than one title, they had all-time greats to help. The only coach who could legitimately make the claim they won a title without a superstar, was Brown with those tough early 2000s Pistons teams, but even he had Rasheed Wallace in the vicinity of his prime. Even one-timers like Carlisle, Fitch, Doc, Westhead and Cunningham had some of the finest players in the NBA’s history to implement their game plan.
Compounding the simple numbers game that provides very few coaches (only 30 in the entire history of NBA) with a ring, is the fact that coaching in today’s NBA is a subjective game. Most teams run similar sets, and players are provided veritable tomes of data on their next opponent in a scouting report before each game. Plus, the public — even the tireless beat reporters — don’t get to actually see a coach, well, coaching. Sure, you see him screaming on the sideline or gesticulating in a silly manner as sweat stains their face and button-down shirts, but the ins and outs of coaching are largely esoteric. Because fans don’t really know what coaches do, exactly, the only way to judge them is on win-loss record. If a coach has a bad team around him (paging Brett Brown), they’re not likely to hold up well under that sort of half-formed scrutiny.
So it’s worth looking at everyone else. Here are the top 5 coaches, presently in the league, who have yet to win an NBA Title.
Some may will definitely disagree with these choices, so feel free to reprimand me in the comments (you will anyway).
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5. Mark Jackson
A coaching newbie, but one who still somehow commands the respect of his players. In just his second year as a coach — not just as the coach of the Golden State Warriors — Jackson led them to their best season in franchise history since Rick Barry was scowling his way to the Warriors’ only NBA title in 1975 (the Run-TMC era didn’t ever do better than win a single Western Semifinal game in 1991). Sure, some of Jackson’s platitudes sound trite taken out of context, the proselytizing can turn some off and he wasn’t the best analyst for the YES Network or ABC, but the Warriors responded to him last season.
That’s half the battle when you’re an NBA coach. Most of the roster is making a lot more money than coaches are, and they’re liable to sabotage a coach if you’re not playing them as much as they believe their contract demands. Jackson — as a former player — is able to navigate the rocky terrain inherent in the job description of an NBA head coach. Plus, he’s got some of the best reactions to what’s happening on the court.
4. Mike Brown
Poor Mike Brown. Some blamed him for LeBron James‘ title-less tenure in Cleveland; doubly so after LeBron decided to work on his inside game and jumper before winning back-to-back titles in Miami. Brown also lasted all of five games with the D-12, Kobe and Nash triumvirate in LA, going 1-4 in the process. Now he’s back where he started, and also won a Coach of the Year after the 2008-09 season, Cleveland.
The Cavs have a young, exciting team with playoff aspirations after acquiring Andrew Bynum, Jarrett Jack and No. 1 pick Anthony Bennett this off-season to add to a team that already had Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters, Tristan Thompson and the bouncy tresses of Anderson Varejao.
The Cavs want to make the playoffs, and the one thing Brown does better than just about everyone else in the league, defense, was Cleveland’s biggest problem last season. Only three teams — the Bobcats, Kings and Hornets — gave up more points per possession than Cleveland last year. The Cavs’ best player, Kyrie — for all his offensive brilliance — is a pretty horrendous defender, prone to ball-watching on the perimeter. But this team is so young, the Cavs are bound to make defensive mistakes, and that’s where Brown comes in.
He’ll go a long way towards curtailing the young Cavaliers’ bad defensive habits. He’ll implement a system that is easy to follow, and the younger players can work on playing like the better defensive teams do, tethered together as a single mobile unit. The stingiest teams on the defensive end last year, Indiana, Memphis, San Antonio, play five-man defense where they’re rotating for each other as if they’re all tethered together on a single string. Brown will instill that same philosophy in Cleveland, and hopefully NBA people will stop calling him out for failing to win with LeBron James. Remember, Mo Williams was the second best player on a couple of those teams and Antawn Jamison got heavy minutes.
3. Frank Vogel
We’ve still seen people mentioning Vogel’s decision not to play Roy Hibbert at the end of game 1 in last season’s Eastern Conference Finals against Miami. Analytically, this made sense because Chris Bosh was a possible shooter in that position, so looking back — even after LeBron pivoted for a game-winning lay-up — the move still feels fraught with subjectivity. If Hibbert had played and Bosh had hit the game-winner because Roy couldn’t get out to him in time, the same people would be calling Vogel out for having Hibbert in the game.
Vogel is one of the best in the game today, and he’s been instrumental in bringing Indiana back to the top of the Eastern Conference. He’s also done so in a different way than most of this youngish peers in the coaching ranks. Rather than adopt the position-less small-ball tactics most of his contemporaries favor, Vogel has gone 180 degrees in the opposite direction, installing a powerful front-court with a tough defensive mentality.
It’s paid off, too. Since taking over for Jim O’Brien midway through the 2010-11 season, Vogel has steadily improved their defense. Last season, despite a slow start, they finished with the league’s top defense, giving up just 96.6 points per 100 possessions, which was almost a point better than the second ranked defense in the league last year, Memphis (97.4 per 100). And he did so without the 2013 NBA Defensive Player of the Year in the Grizzlies’ Marc Gasol. The Pacers defense allows them to compete even if their offense can oftentimes be stagnant. In the playoffs, that attention to defense matters more than you’d think. Everyone’s defense improves, and so the grind-it-out mentality of teams like Memphis and Indiana fits well in the hyper-competitive playoffs.
With Roy Hibbert getting stronger, the Pacers improving their bench this off-season, Paul George making a mini-leap in the playoffs last year and the return of Danny Granger next season, Vogel has his best chance yet to get a ring and join the ranks of the luminaries mentioned in the opening.
Check out the top 2 current NBA coaches without a ring…
2. Tom Thibodeau
This one is sort of cheating. Thibs was basically Coach 1A under Doc Rivers when the Celtics won the 2008 NBA title. He’s the biggest reason many teams have implemented his defensive strategy of overloading the strong-side in the paint in an effort to curb penetration and force a lot of low efficiency mid-range jumpers. Thibs’ defensive philosophy — coming on the heels of the NBA’s decision to allow zone defense — has also translated when he was given an opportunity to become a head coach in Chicago.
In a lot of ways the Bulls are the perfect team for Thibs, at least they were when 2011 MVP Derrick Rose was healthy. Luol Deng and Jimmy Butler are better-than-average wing defenders, Joakim Noah was in DPOY conversations last year despite playing much of the season’s final third with Plantar Fasciitis. The year before Thibodeau took over as coach before the 2010-11 season, the Bulls were the 10th best defensive team in the league in terms of points per possession. The next two seasons, they were first. Last year, even with all their injuries, the Bulls finished 5th.
This year, Derrick Rose is back and Jimmy Butler has turned into a two-way star on the rise at the off-guard spot (he defended LeBron James really well in the Eastern Conference Semifinals last year). Thibodeau’s got a healthy team returning next season, and they look to challenge Brooklyn, Indiana and Miami for Eastern Conference supremacy.
Some might point to the heavy minutes Thibodeau plays some of his starters and use that to castigate his coaching ability. They haven’t been paying attention. Thibodeau’s players leave everything on the court, and there’s no greater sign of respect for a caoch. Whether they’re playing 40 plus minutes a night or not, Thibodeau has earned their respect with his defensive acument and no non-sense appraoch to the game.
1. Rick Adelman
After learning under coach Jack Ramsay in the early 80’s, Adelman was kept on the Blazers’ staff through two more ensuing coaching changes before finally taking the reigns as Portland’s head coach before the 1989 season. He led the Clyde Drexler Blazers to two NBA Finals in three years and one Western Conference Finals — falling to Magic Johnson‘s Lakers team that year. All told, that’s not a bad beginning to any coaching resume.
Then came an abortive two years at the helm of the post-Don Nelson Golden State Warriors, but then he was hired by the Sacramento Kings in 1998. The season before Adelman took over, Eddie Jordan led the Kings to a record of 27-55. After Adelman’s hiring, and the arrival of Chris Webber, they finished the lockout shortened 1998-99 season with a 27-23 winning record, duplicating the win total from the year before with 32 less games on the schedule.
The next season, the Kings continued their success with a wide open offense spearheaded by Webber and exciting rookie Jason Williams, they won 44 games, but were again bounced in the first round of the playoffs. The next season, they finished with a 55-27 record, good for second in the Pacific Division. They reached the Western Semifinals. The season after, they won 61 games to finally win the Pacific, and were within a game of the 2002 NBA Finals before Robert Horry struck.
Starting in the 2000-01 season, Adelman’s Kings teams never missed the playoffs, and won over 50 games every year until his last. He’s an offensive savant like Thibs is a defensive one, able to replicate the scoring success he enjoyed in Portland and Sacramento with the a Rockets team missing Tracy McGrady for large stretches during his first season in Houston in 2007-08. He led them to 22-straight wins, and they won 55 games that first year. The next season they won 53 more games and Adelman got them to the Western Conference Semifinals. He again had them over .500 in 2010 and 2011 despite losing T-Mac and Yao Ming from the year before. The Rockets fell apart the season after Kevin McHale took over for Adelman in 2012, falling below .500 for the first time since Adelman was hired as coach.
Adelman’s brief time as the coach of the Timberwolves has been beset by a couple different losing seasons, but they can largely be blamed on injuries to Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love. Now with Rubio and Love finally healthy entering the 2013-14 season (no more knuckle push-ups Kevin), the Timberwolves are legitimate competitors for one of the final spots in a tough Western Conference. Adelman has proven time and again, with multiple franchises, that he can win, and win often in the regular season and — less-so — in the postseason.
But that last point is worth pondering: if Horry hadn’t nailed that three-pointer in 2002 to even the series 2-2, or if Jordan hadn’t caught fire in the first half of game 1 in the 1992 Finals, Adelman might have already won a title. Things happen beyond a coach’s control all the time.
That’s the thing with coaching in the NBA: you can only do so much. At the end of the day, the players decide the game. But in today’s game, Adelman best exemplifies a top tier coach, one who hasn’t ever won a ring, but one who has also won almost everywhere he’s gone; this despite — like with Sacramento — no franchise pedigree to rely on like the Lakers and Celtics of the world.
Thats why he’s our top, ring-less, NBA coach in today’s game. We hope he finally gets one, too. No one deserves the enter the hallowed ground of championship winning NBA coaches more than Adelman (except possibly George Karl; somebody should give him and Lionel Hollins jobs soon).
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