Great players win championships, but behind virtually every NBA dynasty is a coach who figured out how to maximize that talent. Coaching isn’t just drawing up plays. It’s managing personalities, making adjustments, building systems, knowing when to change them and keeping a locker room together when championship expectations arrive every season. There have been plenty of legendary coaches throughout NBA history, but these five stand above the rest for me.
#5 – Steve Kerr
Steve Kerr sometimes gets dismissed in all-time coaching discussions because of the talent he inherited in Golden State. Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and eventually Kevin Durant gave Kerr unbelievable rosters, but simply having great players doesn’t automatically create a dynasty. Kerr inherited a 51-win Warriors team and immediately took them to 67 wins and an NBA championship. The following season, Golden State went 73-9, and Kerr would ultimately lead the Warriors to six NBA Finals appearances and four championships.
One of the biggest reasons I rate Kerr this highly is Golden State’s dominance immediately after halftime. From 2015 through 2022, the Warriors ranked first in the NBA in third-quarter point differential. Think about what that says about Kerr and his staff. They would watch what an opponent was doing for two quarters, head into the locker room, make their adjustments and routinely come back onto the floor and blow teams out of the water. Over an eight-year stretch, that isn’t some random trend. That is coaching.
Kerr also made several decisions that helped create the dynasty. Moving Draymond Green into the starting lineup unlocked Golden State’s small-ball style, while inserting Andre Iguodala into the starting lineup while trailing Cleveland 2-1 in the 2015 NBA Finals helped change that series. LeBron James still produced monstrous numbers, but Iguodala made him work for everything while Golden State won the final three games and Iguodala took home Finals MVP.
Then came 2022. Durant was gone, Thompson had missed more than two years with devastating injuries and Golden State had missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons. Kerr adapted again and the Warriors won their fourth championship of his tenure. Great players made the Warriors dynasty possible, but Steve Kerr helped turn them into a dynasty.
#4 – Red Auerbach
Putting a coach with nine NBA championships at number four sounds almost disrespectful because Red Auerbach’s résumé is ridiculous. Auerbach coached the Boston Celtics from 1950 through 1966 and built one of the greatest dynasties in professional sports. Boston won nine championships under Auerbach, including eight consecutive titles from 1959 through 1966. Eight straight championships is something we will almost certainly never see again.
Auerbach was also ahead of his time. His Celtics emphasized transition basketball, defense, depth and team play. He coached legends including Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, John Havlicek and Sam Jones, and maintaining that collection of talent and its hunger year after year was an accomplishment itself. His influence extended beyond basketball as well. Auerbach helped break racial barriers in professional basketball, including drafting Chuck Cooper, the first Black player selected in an NBA Draft, and later choosing Bill Russell to become the NBA’s first Black head coach.
So why is a nine-time champion only fourth? Era matters. For much of Auerbach’s career, the NBA contained fewer than ten teams, while Boston assembled an extraordinary concentration of Hall of Fame talent. That doesn’t invalidate his accomplishments, but comparing nine championships from that version of the NBA directly with coaches navigating larger leagues, free agency, salary caps and dramatically greater roster movement isn’t completely fair either. Red is unquestionably one of the greatest ever, but I have three coaches slightly ahead of him.
#3 – Pat Riley
Pat Riley’s greatness isn’t simply that he won five NBA championships as a head coach. It’s that he proved he could win in completely different ways. Riley took over the Los Angeles Lakers during the 1981-82 season and became the leader of Showtime. With Magic Johnson orchestrating the offense and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar anchoring the middle, Riley’s Lakers played fast, glamorous basketball and became one of the defining teams of the 1980s. Riley led Los Angeles to four championships and seven NBA Finals appearances as head coach.
What makes Riley particularly impressive to me is what happened afterward. When he eventually coached the New York Knicks, he didn’t try to recreate Showtime without Magic Johnson. Instead, his teams became almost the complete opposite. The Knicks were physical, defensive, methodical and downright miserable to play against. Riley adapted his philosophy to his personnel rather than forcing his personnel into the philosophy he had previously used.
Then he went to Miami and proved he could win there too. In 2006, with Dwyane Wade producing one of the greatest Finals performances ever and Shaquille O’Neal providing a veteran presence inside, Riley led the Heat back from a 2-0 Finals deficit against Dallas to win his fifth championship as a head coach. Different players, different styles, different eras. Riley won everywhere.
#2 – Gregg Popovich
If longevity, adaptability and sustained excellence were the only criteria, Gregg Popovich might be number one. Popovich took over the San Antonio Spurs during the 1996-97 season and built one of the most consistently successful organizations professional sports has ever seen. He won five NBA championships, reached six NBA Finals and coached San Antonio through completely different versions of championship basketball.
The early Spurs were built around Tim Duncan and David Robinson, using size, defense and disciplined half-court basketball to overwhelm opponents. After Robinson retired, Pop continued building around Duncan while Tony Parker and Manu Ginóbili developed into stars. Then, as basketball became faster and increasingly perimeter-oriented, Popovich changed with it.
By 2014, San Antonio was playing some of the most beautiful team basketball the NBA had ever seen. Constant passing, cutting, movement and unselfishness culminated in a dominant Finals performance when the Spurs dismantled LeBron James and the Miami Heat in five games. The same coach who had won with the defensive, interior-focused Spurs was now winning with a beautiful ball-movement offense more than a decade later.
Then there’s the consistency. San Antonio put together an almost absurd run of 50-win seasons, remaining a contender while the league constantly changed around them, and Popovich eventually became the NBA’s all-time leader in regular-season coaching victories. Five championships across three different decades isn’t just longevity. That’s evolution.
#1 – Phil Jackson
This one isn’t particularly complicated.
Eleven championships as a head coach.
Phil Jackson won six championships with the Chicago Bulls and another five with the Los Angeles Lakers. He reached 13 NBA Finals and coached three separate three-peats: Chicago from 1991 through 1993, Chicago again from 1996 through 1998 and Los Angeles from 2000 through 2002. Nobody else has done anything comparable in the modern NBA.
Of course, Jackson coached ridiculous talent. Michael Jordan. Scottie Pippen. Dennis Rodman. Shaquille O’Neal. Kobe Bryant. But look at the personalities in that sentence. Managing superstar talent is part of coaching, and Jackson may have been better at it than anyone. He had to manage Jordan’s relentless competitiveness, Rodman’s unpredictability, the complicated relationship between Shaq and Kobe and eventually Kobe’s transition into becoming the unquestioned leader of another championship Lakers team.
Jackson’s teams were famously built around the triangle offense, but his greatest strength may have been understanding people. He knew when to challenge players, when to leave them alone and how to convince enormous personalities to sacrifice individual control for a system.
Perhaps the strongest argument for Jackson came after the Shaq and Kobe dynasty collapsed. Shaq left Los Angeles, Jackson briefly left and the Lakers rebuilt around Kobe. Jackson eventually returned and Los Angeles climbed all the way back to the top, reaching three consecutive Finals from 2008 through 2010 and winning back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010.
People can dismiss Jackson because he coached Jordan, Pippen, Shaq and Kobe, but that’s always been a weak argument to me. Gregg Popovich had Tim Duncan. Pat Riley had Magic and Kareem. Steve Kerr had Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. Red Auerbach had Bill Russell and a roster filled with Hall of Famers. Great coaches usually have great players. That’s how championships work.
The question is what they accomplish with them.
Phil Jackson took superstar talent and turned it into 11 championships, 13 Finals appearances and three separate three-peats across two franchises. Nobody managed stars better. Nobody won more championships as an NBA head coach.
For me, Phil Jackson is the greatest coach in NBA history.
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