Here are your super official NBA-COACHES Category Rankings
My objective criteria included rings, Coach of the Year awards, Win%, Total wins, Post-season appearances, PS Win% and online rankings. Don't know that I really overly weighted or discounted any category as I think it takes a number of factors to determine success as a coach. Longevity, regular season success and post season success are all factors of equal value, IMO and general perception among the pundits helps with all of this. I also through in a little bit of subjectivity from their strategies, innovations and general impact on the league.
Top coaches not selected - Rudy Tomjanovich, Rick Adelman and George Karl. Not sure if they would have finished above anyone in the draft or not as they were right around that 12-20 range in most online rankings I read.
As always, from bottom to top:
Tier 4 - The really good (but not quite great)
#16 (1 pt) - Tommy Heinsohn - Coached for only 8 years, all with Boston and Red Auerbach as the GM. Won two rings with 3 HOF's and did win one COY award. His total wins ranked #15 on this list and he was never ranked above #20 on any of the all-time lists I found online and had the fewest postseason appearances with six. Basically he had a short career with a good team for a great franchise. He performed well, but few coaches have been set up as well so it wasn't enough to get him out of the cellar here.
#15 (2 pts) - Bill Fitch - 2x COY and 1 win shy of 1,000 total wins for his career for five different franchises. Won a ring with the Bird led Celtics in 1981. Ranked as high as 12th by one pundit. However, he is the only guy on this list whose career regular season win percentage is below .500 (.460) and had a losing season 14 out of 25 years. I liked his longevity, postseason and COY awards, but that win percentage was a huge detractor. I just don't see how a guy can be considered an all time great if he was generally unsuccessful for most of his career.
#14 (3 pts) - KC Jones - Won two rings (both with Bird-led Boston....I'm seeing a trend here). However, he never had one losing season in 9 full seasons as an NBA head coach and made the playoffs every year. He was fired 36 games into the 91-92 season by Seattle with a .500 record (who eventually were coached by George Karl and made the playoffs with 47 wins). Definitely worthy to be selected, but still not good enough to get out of this tier.
#13 (4 pts) - Billy Cunningham - He coached for only 8 years, all with Philly. He won one ring with 4 HOF's and no COY awards. However, those 8 years were stellar, with postseason appearances every year (including 3 finals appearances) and he posted the 2nd best regular season win% and the 3rd best playoff win% on this list. And this was mostly in an era of the Bird-Celtics and the Magic-Lakers. The only thing that really kept him so low on the list was the shortened nature of his tenure.
Tier 3 - The almost or sometimes greats
#12 (5 pts) - John Kundla - He was the coach of the first dynasty in the NBA. Coached Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers to 4 out of the first 5 NBA titles. He had 10 NBA seasons and one BAA season (the precursor to the NBA) where he won that title. Over those 10 years, he made the playoffs 9 times and has the 2nd highest postseason win% on this list. He was also known as a players coach and developed the position of power forward by pairing Vern Mikkelsen with Mikan down low. Before the guys at the top of this list came along, it was Big John followed by everyone else. However, I just can't justify putting a guy that coached against such limited competition with a stacked team in such an early era any higher.
#11 (6 pts) - Dr. Jack Ramsay - If this contest were about which coach was the most impressive human, Ramsay would probably win it hands down. The man was beloved and had a career in basketball that spanned well beyond the NBA. But his NBA career is worthy of many accolades as well. He won a title with Portland and finished his career with 16 postseason appearances in 20 full seasons (he resigned in 1988 from the Pacers after starting out 0-7). He was fanatical about his players being in shape and he was overly emotional with wins and losses, but was regarded as an innovator and master motivator. His numbers aren't as high as some of the guys below him, but his impact across the NBA was a great one and he retired from coaching with 908 total wins.
#10 (7 pts) - Red Holzman - He won one COY and two titles with the Knicks. I am too young to have seen those teams play, but I am somewhat fascinated by the Reed-Frazier led Knicks teams and their slew of HOFers. He was the first to utilize pressure defense for the entire game and one of the first to use film for scouting and study with his coaching staff and players. He was also known for how well he handled the pressure of NYC (the mecca of basketball). Those Knicks were a cultural phenomenon, a basketball revelation and a big part of NBA history and Red was at the helm.
#9 (8 pts) - Jerry Sloan - 20 postseason appearances in 26 seasons including a streak of 15 straight. He ran the pick and roll before it was cool and was known as one of the meanest, toughest SOB's to coach in the league. He never won a COY or a title (thanks to MJ), but amassed 1,319 total wins and had a career regular season win% over 600. He may have been a red ### and never got to the top, but the length of his career combined with consistent success makes him a top 10 coach of all time.
#8 (9 pts) - Lenny Wilkens - He has the 2nd most regular season wins and the 2nd most total wins in NBA history and had 20 postseason appearances in 32 seasons. He won a title with Seattle and won a COY award. He was a master at crafting teams that performed better than the sum of their parts and he never coached a HOF player in their prime. While we can speculate what he may have done with more talent, what he did do with what he had was great enough to be firmly placed inside the top ten of all time.
#7 (10 pts) - Don Nelson - Nellie is the true mastermind behind today's "small ball" and inventor of the "point forward". He also is the clubhouse leader in regular season wins and won 3 COY awards (although no titles). He had 18 playoff appearances in 31 years but never made the finals. However, his 8th seeded Warriors squad upset the #1 seed Mavericks in 2007, which is one of the most memorable upsets in NBA history. He also has been reportedly smoking pot since he retired, which is irrelevant to this analysis but notable nonetheless.
#6 (11 pts) - Larry Brown - LB easily leads this list in number of coaching stops in his career and led eight different NBA teams into the postseason. His career was tumultuous and not without controversies but the numbers do not lie, he could coach. He coached the AI-Philly team to the Finals in 2001 and then led the Pistons to back to back finals in 2004 & 2005, winning it in 2004. He had 18 total postseason appearances in 27 seasons, had 100 postseason wins and 1,098 regular season wins. He was in the top 8 of every online list and is the only coach to win both an NCAA title and an NBA title. He may have been a nomad, but it seems as though he thrived in change and embraced multiple styles throughout his coaching career, but always emphasized simplicity and "playing the right way".
#5 (12 pts) - Chuck Daly - This is probably the one coach who got the most benefit of subjective treatment. Sure he won 2 titles, made the playoffs in 12 out of 13 full seasons and had regular season and playoff win%s of nearly 600. But he was also one of the most gifted communicators and collaborators in NBA history. He turned the offensive minded, fast breaking (and losing) Pistons into the defense first Bad Boys. He made Dennis Rodman a DPOY. He coached the Dream Team and received rave reviews from the team's stars for his coaching and managing style. And, oh yeah, he had style the whole time. Tailored suits, perfect hair and all he did was win. His total win numbers are lower than most of the coaches around him in these rankings, but he also didn't get his first head coaching job until age 51. What he did with the time he did have was remarkable and worthy of this spot.
Tier 2 - The truly great ones
#4 (13 pts) - Pat Riley - The hair was what I remembered most about Riley watching him coach the Lakers when I was a kid. I didn't know I was watching a master of strategy and motivation. Showtime basketball predated Riley, but he brought the defense up to a level that won them four championships. He led the Knicks to the Finals in 1994 where they lost to the Rockets and finally won a 5th ring in 2006 with the Wade/Shaq led Heat. He coached great defense throughout his career and made the playoffs in 21 of his 24 seasons as a head coach. The longevity and variation of styles with which he won is remarkable and he is one of the few NBA people to have had great success at multiple levels of the NBA (player, coach and executive).
#3 (14 pts) - Red Auerbach - His NBA coaching career began with the Tri-City Blackhawks in 1949 where his team went 28-29. The next year he joined the Boston Celtics and that was his lone losing season in 17 seasons of coaching in the NBA. At the end of that 17 years, he stepped back from coaching after raising up their 8th consecutive NBA championship banner and 9th in 10 years. He emphasized teamwork and took a personalized approach to each player. He is also credited with helping to break the color barrier in the NBA by drafting the first black player and then by utilizing the first all-black starting five. For almost 40 years, he was considered the greatest coach of all time. Most pundits still rank him as #2, but the landscape of the NBA was not as difficult to navigate in the 1950's and 60's as it has been for the past 20 years.
#2 (15 pts) - Gregg Popovich - A player's coach who is more demanding of his players than almost any other coach. He is almost as renown as a wine and food critic as he is a basketball coach. If there is one coach on this list I'd most like to have a conversation with, it is Pop. But all that complexity aside, all he does is win. He has more total wins than anyone in NBA history and more postseason appearances as well. 5 rings, 3 COY awards, a record 22 straight postseason appearances and he still isn't done. Most lists have him as #3 behind Red, but I don't see it. The only thing Red has over Pop is rings, and as I mentioned earlier, his era was much simpler than the NBA of the past 20 years. No one has embraced the international players as well as Popovich and his shift from the slow grind out defensive battles of his early years to the beautiful ball movement of these later seasons was revolutionary to the game. Rumors abound of his eminent retirement and he was about to have only his second losing season in 24 years before this season was cut off. He is 71, so who knows, but I hope the ride doesn't end here.
Tier 1 - the GOAT
#1 (16 pts) - Phil Jackson - I thought it would be closer than it was but after my research it really wasn't close, hence the one man tier. Sure he coached the greatest player of all time in MJ, but so did a couple of other guys. He also wasn't Kobe's only coach or Shaq's. But he went 20/20 in postseason appearances and won 11 titles. He won his only coach of the year award during the record setting season in 95-96. He has the highest win% in both regular season and postseason and was the unanimous #1 in every list I found online. Few coaches have had the kind of talent to work with that Phil had, but none were able to match his success. The Zen-master is truly the GOAT of NBA coaches.