15 Greatest Coaches in NBA History

15 Greatest Coaches in NBA History

Alongside the selection of the NBA's 75th anniversary team was the selection of the 15 Greatest Coaches in NBA History. The list was compiled based upon unranked selection undertaken exclusively by a panel of 43 current and former NBA coaches in collaboration with the National Basketball Coaches Association. Of the 15 coaches, eight members of the Top 10 Coaches in NBA History in 1996 were selected; original Top 10 coaches Bill Fitch and John Kundla were excluded from the updated list. Nine of the 15 coaches named were alive at the time of the list's announcement, and four of them—Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich, Doc Rivers, and Erik Spoelstra—were active. Since then, Popovich and Rivers retired in 2025 and 2026 respectively and Lenny Wilkens died in 2025. The other deceased coaches are Red Holzman in 1998, Red Auerbach in 2006, Chuck Daly in 2009, Jack Ramsay in 2014, and both K. C. Jones and Jerry Sloan in 2020. Sloan and Don Nelson were the only members to never win a championship as a coach; Nelson won five as a player. Wilkens is the only person named to both the coaches and players lists, doing so for both the 50th and 75th anniversary lists. At the time of selection, 10 of the 15 coaches were members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach. Nelson was the most recent inductee at the time, inducted in 2012. Popovich and Rivers would later be inducted in 2023 and 2026 respectively. Jones is the only inactive coach to not be inducted.