The Anatomy of an NBA Coach

What it takes to be an NBA coach has always left me guessing. I understand that it is some combination of being able to motivate people, understanding the game and being able to see skills in players, and more things, but there has to be more. There must be hundreds of people who could handle an NBA coaching job, but what exactly makes a coach successful?

To answer this question, I quickly dug up a list of the coaches with the highest win percentages of all time, but only included those past 1979-80 (the year the 3-point line was introduced, and usually taken as the beginning of the modern NBA.) That gave this list of coaches with their career winning percentages, after adding in Larry Brown and Don Nelson for good measure.

Phil Jackson .705
Gregg Popovich .675
Pat Riley .636
Rick Adelman .616
Jerry Sloan .602
Flip Saunders .597
Don Nelson .567
Larry Brown .553

It can be quickly seen that most of these coaches have one thing in common.

Out of the eight of them, half of them had won championships as players with Jackson, Riley and Nelson winning in the NBA and Brown in the ABA.

Popovich never player professionally, instead heading to the military for 5 years before studying under Larry Brown at Pomona-Pitzer in 1985-86.

Flip Saunders played his college basketball with Kevin McHale and was roommates with Tony Dungy.

Jerry Sloan was a two time all-star and was named to a NBA All-Defnesive team six times.

Rick Adelman was once compared to Hitler by Phil Jackson, and if that doesn't say something about him as a coach then I don't know what will.

So what makes a good coach? It isn't dependent on the system, whether they prefer defense to offense or if they yell at or coddle their players. Most of the successful coaches have felt what it takes to win, know how to work hard and maximize what they have in themselves and in those around them. They are used to winning, are surrounded by winners and expect success.

Based on this, I looked through the list of some current coaches who have a chance at joining the ranks above.

Scott Brooks has led this year's young OKC team to a 45 wins so far this year, and are currently jockeying for home court advantage in the playoffs. A 23-win team last year, Scott Brooks has come in and coached this team to work hard every night on both ends of the court. All of these players believe in their team and their talents and believe they can win every single night. The team is constantly motivated, and have had their eyes set on winning, no matter the opponent, ever since the outbreak of the season. It was this motivation and desire that allowed a 5'11" Scott Brooks to stay in the league for ten years and win a championship with the Rockets in 1994. Brooks had the taste of winning early in his life and it seems he hasn't looked back since.

Mike Brown has gathered more wins than any other coach over the last two seasons. A lot of this could of course be accounted towards Lebron, but there are no doubts that Mike Brown has extracted the most he could have out of the team he has. Instilling defense first, last years Cavaliers were able to post the highest defensive rating while possessing probably the best offensive player in the league (and well, he might be the best defensive player as well.) Mike Brown learned his craft under Popovich, after being hired as an assistant coach. The Spurs had three consecutive 58+ win teams while Brown was an assistant coach and after winning the title in 2003, he set himself up for his head coaching job in Clevland. The point here is that Brown learned early to expect to win, and learned how to win from a great coach.

Mike D'Antoni played in the Italian League for a dozen years, piling up five championships there and two Euroleague championships. D'Antoni was Kobe Bryant's motivation to pick number 8 for his jersey, after he piled up win after win along his way to being named one of 50 Greatest Euroleague Contributors. D'Anotni's Suns averaged 58 wins a season, and if not for a crazy call on a Horry hip-check, they could have won a championship. D'Antoni took his winning ways he learned playing and coaching in Italy and applied them to the NBA to bring the Suns franchise to some high heights.

What separates a good coach from a serviceable coach is this precedent of winning, the expectation and desire to win. This Muhammad Ali quote sums things up nicely "Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them -- a desire, a dream, a vision." These coaches have surrounded themselves with winning in their lives since a young age and I think you can expect to see one of these three to be hoisting the Larry O'Brien in the near future.

What's in The Future for Don Nelson?

Don Nelson has brought me some of the best basketball moments I've seen. The 'We Believe' Warriors, with Baron Davis dunking so hard on AK-47 that he was crying in practice to Jerry Sloan next season. The old highlights and NBATV classics with Mullin, Richmond and Hardaway or Nash, Finley and Nowitzki that would confuse and cause mismatches all over. Best of all, his innovative plays and tactics that have changed the game and paved the way for some of the new-age coaches like D'Antoni and Stan Van Gundy.

Yet even with all of this, I still never really felt that the guy was a great coach recently. All of the turmoil with players, all of those losses and the constant stories of him just not giving a shit anymore. The guy is actually approaching 70 years old right now and is in the same age group of the coaches like Jerry Sloan and Phil Jackson, who are fighting the clock in the wrong direction. And I've always felt he's stunting the growth of Anthony Randolph.


That's why when I saw Tim Kawakimi's post on Talking Points I agreed with it completely. It fed the fire and I kept thinking that Don Nelson wasn't fit to coach anyone anymore, let alone this mix-match group the Warriors are now.

Later in that day I saw this post on Golden State of Mind (GSOM), a rebuttal of sorts to the post on Talking Points. I read through it and I couldn't help but be slightly persuaded by a lot of the points.

The main point that was debated was that Don Nelson is past his time, especially for this team. Kawakimi argued that the teams of the past suited Nelson better, and that this roster does not fit the needs of the franchise right now. GSOM says that Don Nelson made this roster, for his system and no other coach would be able to get as many wins out of it.

I tend to agree with the idea that this team could only really be played by Nelson (or maybe D'Antoni). The team has a littany of guards and forwards who really only have three attributes - speed, shooting and passing. It would be nice for the team to have more stability and a more balanced roster, but that just wouldn't work for Nelson. The best thing Cohan can do is let Nelson finish out his contract and give him a chance with a fully equipped and healthy roster - if that time ever comes.

Thanks for making this possible, Mr. Nelson

In all honesty, after watching the games, not many teams run or compete much harder than the Warriors, despite not even having twenty wins. Of course they look like they are lost on defense constantly, but I would chalk that more up to Nelson's system rather than the individual effort of the players. They all run the floor hard and you can see them sweat buckets all game long. So I don't really buy the idea that Nelson has lost the ear of the team. Chalk the hustle up to the fun system, or the fact that it seems half the team didn't even have an NBA job last year, but either way this team is working hard.

Nelson has shown in the past he can win with this system. He has always had a skilled, diverse forward (Nowitzki, Mullin, Jackson) and a set of quick, skill-based guards who are experts at causing mismatches and headaches for opposing coaches (Nash and Finley, Richmond and Hardaway, Baron and Ellis.) What's stopping this system coming up again with this line-up, highlighted by Curry, Ellis and Randolph? Curry and Ellis have the scoring and passing skills to attack off the pick and roll ruthlessly, and Randolph has the skills to excel in this system if he continues to improve his shooting and basketball knowledge.

Recently, I have noticed more and more Ellis and Curry utilizing the pick and roll to rack up some gaudy assist totals, such as 13 for Ellis against the Hornets on the 17th, 11 for Ellis against the Lakers on the 15th and ten for Curry against Toronto on the 13th. This comes as the team is turning the ball over less and less, while causing lots of turnovers for the opposing team. Remember that game against the Lakers recently? The Lakers had a ridiculous 24 turnovers, over ten past their season average of 13.5, while the Warriors only had 5 turnovers. They did lose the game... but that's not the point here. All of the best Don Nelson teams have attacked one major facet of the game - you guessed it - turnovers.

The 2002-03 Nash-Nowitzki-Finley team that won 60 games? Opponents averaged 16 turnovers, as these Mavs averaged under 12.

Those 'We Believe' Warriors? Opponents tripped up almost 17 times per game against them, while they managed to keep their turnovers to just over 13. Nelson was able to keep this differential while using three of the most turnover prone players I can think of currently (Ellis, Baron, SJack) in the league.

So, with the right players and some luck and a bit of health, I feel like this roster could help correct the direction the Warriors are heading. If you look at the list of the wins from the Mavs and Warriors teams that Don Nelson coached, you can notice one thing. The win totals are erratic and jump year to year, and he is definitely prone to having a big improvement with what seems like a small change. I think Nelson has earned the chance to once again show that he is one of the most innovative basketball minds that we have seen in a long time and I would love to see him work his magic all over again, even if it has the chance of blowing up in a few young players faces.

Before reading all of this I thought that Don Nelson was just messing around to his whims, picking players who could only shoot and pass and not giving a damn about any other skills.

But now, a small part of me starts to think that this current 19-win team is only a few players (i.e. an improved Randolph, a healthy Biedrins) away from giving this team a substantial jump in the Western Conference standings. Just a few tweaks from causing those same mismatches that won Don Nelson Coach of the Year those 5 times. Just a small part of me.