List Of National Basketball Association Head Coaches With 400 Games Coached
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a major professional basketball league in North America. It was founded in 1946 as the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The league adopted its current name at the start of the 1949–50 season when it merged with the National Basketball League (NBL). The league consists of 30 teams, of which 29 are located in the United States and one in Canada.
In the NBA, a head coach is the highest ranking coach of a coaching staff. They typically hold a more public profile and are paid more than the assistant coaches. Lenny Wilkens has coached the most regular season games. He has coached 2,487 games with 6 teams in 32 seasons. Don Nelson, has won the most regular season games and also coached the second most regular season games after Wilkens. He has coached 2,398 games and has won 1,335 games with 4 teams in 31 seasons. Bill Fitch, Jerry Sloan and Larry Brown are the only other coaches who have coached more than 2,000 regular season games. 20 other head coaches have coached more than 1,000 regular season games. Two of those coaches, Gregg Popovich and Al Attles, have spent their entire coaching career with one team. Popovich has coached 1,180 games with the San Antonio Spurs in his 15-year career, while Attles has coached 1,075 games with the Warriors franchise in his 14-year career. Jerry Sloan has coached 1,809 regular season games, the most games coached with one team, during his 23-year career with the Utah Jazz. He is also the only coach to win 1,000 games with one team. Larry Brown has coached 9 different teams, the most number of teams coached among the head coaches.
Former Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers head coach, Phil Jackson, won 11 NBA championships, the most in NBA history. He is the only coach who has won multiple championship with multiple teams. He won six titles with the Bulls and five titles with the Lakers. He also leads the NBA for the most postseason games coached and the most postseason wins. Red Auerbach won nine championships with the Boston Celtics. He won his first title in 1957 before winning eight consecutive titles from 1959 to 1966. John Kundla and Pat Riley each won five championships. Kundla won all of his titles with the Lakers, while Riley won four titles with the Lakers and one with the Miami Heat. Current San Antonio Spurs head coach, Popovich, is the only other coach who has won more than two championships; he won four titles with the Spurs. Nelson and Riley each won the Coach of the Year Award three times, while Fitch, Hubie Brown, Cotton Fitzsimmons and Gene Shue have each won it twice. Riley is the only coach to win the award with three different franchises. 16 head coaches, Auerbach, Larry Brown, Jackson, Kundla, Riley, Sloan, Wilkens, Chuck Daly, Alex Hannum, Red Holzman, Alvin Julian, Ken Loeffler, Frank McGuire, Jack Ramsay, Bill Sharman and Tex Winter, have been inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach. Auerbach, Daly, Fitch, Holzman, Jackson, Kundla, Nelson, Ramsay, Riley and Wilkens were named in the list of Top 10 Coaches in NBA History announced at the league's 50th anniversary in 1996.
This list includes all head coaches who have coached at least 400 games in the NBA or BAA. The list does not include games in the American Basketball Association (ABA) for head coaches who coached in the ABA prior to the ABA–NBA merger.
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