Is Phil Jackson the best basketball coach of all time?
 

Or was he just lucky to get the players he did?

Having teams with Jordan, Pippen, and Grant (and later, Rodman)

And then having Shaq and Kobe, and now, even with Kobe, he wouldn't have won the championship this year if Garnett hadn't been hurt.

Discuss.

10 championships in less than 20 years coaching? id definitely say he was the best of all time..

Best Coach and smartest guy that puts himself in the right place with the right people.

its the whole package.

he didnt end up with or have those players on accident. ;)

Then what would 14 championships in 15 years make Red Auerbach? :error

I believe auerbach only won 9 as a head coach. :error

Arnold Jacob "Red" Auerbach (September 20, 1917 – October 28, 2006) was a basketball coach of the Washington Capitols, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks and the Boston Celtics. After he retired from coaching, he served as president and front office executive of the Celtics until his death. As a coach, he won 938 games (a record at his retirement) and nine National Basketball Association (NBA) championships (surpassed only by Phil Jackson). As general manager and team president of the Celtics, he won an additional seven NBA titles, for a grand total of 16 in a span of 29 years, making him one of the most successful team officials ever in the history of North American professional sports. :thumbsup

best of all time........no there is always someone better by 1% point......


but lets just say hes in the top 10. :thumbsup

Really??? Do we even have to ask this question??? :winkwink: :1orglaugh

Sorry...my mistake, I had just woken up :error

That should have said "Then what would 9 championships in a ten-year span make Red Auerbach?" :error

(And I know he coached a bunch of flotsam and jetsam for several years before the championship run started - but I'm comparing apples and apples here - looking at the records when they were coaching players the caliber of Russell/Cousy/Havlicek and MJ/Shaq/Kobe.)

It makes him one bad ass mofo. :pimp

He is good, but Europe coaches are better, don't be fooled with that league

How many teams were in the NBA when Red won those rings???? 8 -10 tops

Jackson is better....thread may close now

A def yes!!

Right, so that means that almost every team was *filled* with quality players, since only the best 120 players could even get jobs.
Feel free to make your argument, but you're making mine :1orglaugh

Please go post in a soccer thread, um i mean football. Thanks.

red only won those titles because he had bill russell, without him he would have won 0.

He is the best!

Every winning coach had winning players. Its not possible to win without superstars. Look at the Lakers teams (Magic, Kareem) Celtics (Bird, McHale, Parrish, Russell, Havlichek). Spurs (Duncan, Robinson) Rockets ( Hakeem, Drexler ). A coach can win without players.

Stan Van Gundy would have the same amount of titles if he had Phil's teams.

He hit quite a milestone this year haha, wow.

Yup his teams always played against a top 10 point gaurd, shooting gaurd, small forward, power forward, and center.

You should go back and watch game 4 and see the numerous coaching mistakes he made any one of which could have saved them from the loss.

Every good coach has good players but not all good players win championships.

How many rings did Shaq, Jordan or Kobe win without Phil? The one ring shaq has without Phil was with Riley another great coach.

Ok nuff said.

i think you have to give it to the man, he's won everywhere he's gone, people forget Phil Jackson started out coaching in the old CBA.

as for Auerbach vs Jackson - the NBA is much tougher now, a 1 in 30 chance to win a championship each season vs 1 in 8-10 in Auerbach's day. As for MikeSmoke's argument that the teams Auerbach competed against were tougher because there were only 100 players in the entire 9 team league - that's offset by the fact that basketball is now a global game and there are outstanding non-Americans on every team. No Yao Mings and Dirk Nowitzki's back then.

Also, another edge to Jackson, free agency - Celtics built a powerhouse and kept it together year after year after year. Jackson every season has to fit together a puzzle from a few core stars and then the supporting class that his GM's throw at him. He's pretty masterful at that.

then there's the people skills that are necessary today - today's players are multi millionaires who are mostly 'me' guys, many are downright idiots and thugs and spoiled brats. Jackson is fantastic at dealing with different personalities.

As far as x's and o's - there are lots of coaches from then and now who were the equal strategically of Auerbach's and Jackson's. Basketball isn't football, especially with the NBA, teams all run the same plays. The trick is putting the right players out there, at the end of the game usually and massaging egos and knowing how to deal with 12 different personalities so the team sticks together.

his record says yes

He didn't get those players on accident? WTF are you talking about?

That he "willed" those players to himself with psychic powers, or are you saying that Jordan wouldn't have been a superstar if Jackson wasn't his coach?

So why wasn't he the best last year? Why was an inferior coach like Doc Rivers able to win a title even though Jackson had basically the same team last year that he had this year?

My point is simply that Jackson won 9 rings with teams that had Michael Jordan or Shaq, in their prime. Any coach could have won multiple championships with those players.

Doc Rivers isn't considered one of the great coaches in basketball, but he won a ring last year and will probably win one next year. Is that because he's a "guru" or is it because Garnett, Allen, and Pierce are the most dominant threesome in basketball the way Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman were in their day?

Personally, I think that a guy like Larry Brown is a better coach, although he unfortunately suffers from the same disease that plauges the Saban family.
Can't-stay-in-one-place-itis. :2 cents:

don't hate he's #1

Phil Jackson's Laker championships I think are coaching ability accomplishments because he had to at least do some work to get them to play ball, keeping team chemistry somewhat together is a part of coaching. However, 6-7 of his championships especially his Jordan championships were roll the ball out on the floor championships and anybody could of won those including me. Jackson isn't the best coach of all time and the question was best basketball coach of all time not best NBA coach of all time, so in my opinion that would have to go to a Dean smith or Bob Knight because they actually do coach in college.

Yeah I probably should have specified pro coach, because there are alot of college coaches who really are the reason their teams are successful year in and year out.

I am a die hard Bulls fan so I of course have a bias towards Phil Jackson.

But in the past 30 years you cant leave out Grep Popovich, Chuck Daly, Pat Riley( Love how he beat the Mavs btw )

And Stan Van Gundy, well that guy is Fail...lol

Not sure if you are serious about this. But obviously the Celtics w/ Garnett are a better team. If they had Garnett in the playoffs this year. The playoffs would have been a lot different, but if my grandmother had balls, she would be my grandfather.

Doc Rivers is a good coach. (better then stan van gundy IMO)

There are many team that outright dominated in some seasons (DALLAS MAVERICKS, SACRAMENTO KINGS) and didn't win shit. But they might have won if Phil Jackson was the coach.

Also, asking if he is the best is an opinion. I think he knows how to pull a team together. He has a great offensive scheme. so on so forth. That is my opinion, I could be wrong.

Of course this is all opinion, that's what's fun about it.

My point, is that Jackson hasn't won as an underdog. He always had the team with the most talent when he did win.
He had the best player in the history of the game for most of his titles. He had the best big man in the league in an era when most teams didn't have a big man for the rest, save this year.

This year nobody in their right mind thinks he would have won had it not been for Garnett's injury.

Here's a good question. Do you think if Jackson had been coaching the Nuggets this year, and George Karl had been coaching the Lakers, that the Nuggets would have won it all this year?

If Doc can do it 9 more times then I will agree with you. :thumbsup Stockton and Malone was one of the best duos ever and Sloan is a good coach but no rings. Just having good players is never a guarantee of a ring.

Anyway I never like the who's greatest talk, never works comparing players, coaches are the same. Let's all just agree he's an amazing coach obviously.

There is an elite class for the top players and coaches and Phil is in that class without a doubt.

Apsolutelly he is the best coach ever he left a mark in NBA

No one's questioning that Jackson is a great coach...getting MJ, and then getting Shaq and Kobe, to buy into his system and play "enough" team ball to win is not an easy thing. (I was also a fan of Jackson as a player, even though he played for the Knicks and I grew up a Celtics fan - to me, he was a "Celtics type of player," making the most out of intelligence, hustle and determination.)
But comparing eras is always a futile exercise. It also wasn't easy for Auerbach to meld 5-7 all-stars year after year while getting them to buy into his system and at the same time, deal with perhaps the most mercurial player ever (not to mention the best player ever, please don't argue if you aren't old enought to have seen them both) in Bill Russell. To me, the tie-breaker (other than the 9 titles in 10 years) is that Auerbach was much more of an innovator than Jackson; Jackson's one innovation (other than the whole "zen" thing, which was really just an approach, not an innovation) was implementing the triangle in the NBA - which was really somone else's offense, he just took it to the next level. Auerbach's contributions, ranging from introducing the sixth-man, to building a team around a dominant defensive center and getting superstars to sublimate their offensive numbers (and that isn't even mentioning starting the first all-black lineup ever) make him the clear winner as the *best* NBA coach ever.

(And yes, I think most observers think it's pretty obvious that facing a healthy Garnett, not to mention a healthy Powe and Perkins, Jackson's #10 would be very much in doubt.)

Phil Jackson is the greatest NBA coach there has ever been!

Wow, glad to see some specifics there :1orglaugh