Ok, he asked...scroll by if you are not interested:
Top Tier
Nick Nurse – Innovative, not afraid to take chances, his guys play really hard for him which speaks to culture, transition D is outstanding, plays his best players more
Erik Spoelstra – The culture they have developed is at elite level in professional sports. I know some of that comes from Pat Riley but Spo seems to get the most out of whomever he has. I think they will be a tough out if they see MIL in the playoffs. Love the zone and love his ingenuity on offense
Steve Kerr – Their culture is to be admired. How he included remnants of the Triangle Offense is innovative in itself.
Tier 2
Rick Carlisle – offensive wizard. I would like to see better D but one has to work with what he has
Mike D’Antoni – Started the trend toward playing fast. Not his fault that Horry hip checked Nash precipitating the suspensions and Chris Paul’s hamstring gave out when they had the Dubs on the ropes. His brother provide the best answer ever to a media question here at 1:18 (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6fMCmp7T0) and insight into their philosophy. He gets criticized for not coaching when sometimes coaching is not coaching
Brad Stevens – X and O wizard especially special situations. Russilo/Lawson podcast provided insight into his staff development
Gregg Popovich – King of culture development
Tier 3
Steve Clifford – A Woj podcast he did is something I listen to every November.
Nate McMillan - defense minded in an offense league, admirable
Doc Rivers – whining at officials turns me off…should be higher
Mike Budenholzer
Terry Stotts
Quinn Snyder
Billy Donovan – seeing his style come out more with CP3
Dwayne Casey
Monty Williams – Could jump up…what he did with the bubble Suns has people watching...got railroaded in N.O.
Tier 4
Brett Brown – want him to do well but might be end of line
Taylor Jenkins – promising
Kenny Atkinson – will bounce back
Thibs – defensive guru…see if he changes other stuff
Scott Brooks
Alvin Gentry
Frank Vogel
Tier 5 (not enough info for me to opine but one has to be a really good coach to get one of the jobs)
Mike Malone
Lloyd Pierce
Luke Walton
James Borrego
Ryan Saunders
J.B. Bickerstaff
Here is the rationale behind my rankings:
- Really hard for me to be critical of coaches. The jobs are hard and so much could be happening that we just don’t know about
- When I was young and stupid I thought it was about X’s and O’s but have grown to understand it is about connections and culture
- I don’t believe in the no rings no good argument whether it is for Barkley or D’Antoni
- I saw Hubie Brown at a clinic say, “anyone can win with talent, show me what you can do when you don’t have good players”, so I tried to be subjective in the evaluations
- I don’t get to see every team play enough to make an informed opinion on every coach. I do try to read a lot, watch clinics, and listen to podcasts to gain information on many coaches
- Something really hard to coach is transition defense so I really look at that when ranking coaches
- I coached at a small school where most of my players played football (it is Western PA) and some Spring sport so I kept things simple. Some criticized me for having my teams play “street ball” (their words not mine) but we didn’t have the time to put in some pattern offense. We took the first best shot (within our “what is a good shot” framework) we could get. I tried to teach them to play basketball.