NBA head coaching is better now than ever before. Coaches are coming from more diverse backgrounds and showing off more diverse skill sets. They're using numbers, they're trained in traditional scouting, they're finding it easier to steal plays from each other when companies such as Synergy catalog them. These are very good things for the basketball world.
But they made this task, ranking all the head coaches in the NBA playoffs, nearly impossible. So let's start out with this word: Every coach who made the playoffs is good. There are a handful of NBA coaches who are not good, but they likely will be fired or not extended in the next few days. We can expect that a coach or two who made the playoffs will be gone, as is the nature of the NBA. But most of these guys are keepers.
With no further ado — and after extensive discussions with people around the NBA and NBA media — Sporting News' Adi Joseph ranks the playoff coaches.
This was such a bad situation for any interim coach to enter into. Bickerstaff took over a roster of disenfranchised players whose infighting was costing them the potential for another trip to the Western Conference finals. Bickerstaff has a bright future as a head coach, but he needed a more comfortable landing spot for his first job, and he did little to rectify the major issues facing the Rockets despite slipping them into the playoffs on the season’s final day. He has not been bad in the role as much as mediocre — and not good enough to get the full-time role, most likely.
Donovan has struggled with managing games at an NBA level. That much has been obvious often, particularly when he gives too much trust to Dion Waiters or Enes Kanter. However, even if he is the worst game-manager of any playoff coach, Donovan has done several things that show how good a coach he is and how he won two national championships at Florida. For one, he’s dramatically reduced turnovers. And he has come up with several reliable, simple plays that are nearly unguardable because of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
Lue replaced David Blatt midseason and ruffled some feathers right away, claiming the team wasn’t in shape enough to run his offense. It turns out that most of what he does is similar to what Blatt did, which is fine because Blatt is a good coach. Still, Lue has not changed the tone or the tide in Cleveland in the way a midseason firing typically does, and there is very little reason to believe he improved the Cavaliers.
Vogel once was the talk of the NBA. A young coach hand-picked by Pacers president Larry Bird, Vogel shored up the defense with the help of a Roy Hibbert-David West frontcourt. But his offensive scheming has left room for improvement, as he often relies on Paul George to freelance. That can be effective in the postseason, and there’s a reason the Pacers took the LeBron James-led Heat to seven games in 2013 and 2014. He also sometimes struggles with rotations, which was less of an issue when the Pacers had a stronger starting lineup to lean on. All that said, Vogel is a brilliant defensive mind who has adjusted his schemes on that end to continue to field an elite unit.
Very few NBA coaches have taken stranger paths than Joerger, who took over for a coach fired after making the Western Conference finals and sees his team facing major injuries that impact seeding seemingly every year. Joerger’s job this season in keeping the Grizzlies afloat despite losing Mike Conley and Marc Gasol is astounding, and he has maintained Lionel Hollins’ grit-’n’-grind ethos while trying to move this team into the modern era without the ideal parts. Most criticisms of Joerger, then, come across as criticisms of Grizzlies management.
One of the most underrated coaches in the NBA, Casey entered the season on the hot seat because he has not won a playoff series since arriving in Toronto. But to judge him harshly for that ignores the work he’s done in building those expectations to start with. He is the first coach to maximize Kyle Lowry, turning him from a solid backup to one of the five best point guards in the NBA. He figured out how to get more than scoring from DeMar DeRozan and he uses his rotations well. What’s been most impressive is watching Casey improve from a mediocre coach to a very good one over the course of his career.
Stotts is one of the most creative offensive minds in the NBA. His playcalling is outstanding, particularly out of timeouts. His offense is forward-looking, and he has taken a team that many expected to be among the Western Conference’s worst and turned it into the No. 5 seed. He deserves serious consideration for Coach of the Year for that kind of turnaround after losing five of his top six players. The knocks are that Stotts’ prowess lies largely on the offensive end and he sometimes makes curious rotation decisions.
A strong argument could be made that Budenholzer deserves a spot in the top five of this list. But that’s how strong the coaches are at this stage. All he’s done as Hawks coach is completely turned over the team’s system, getting a full buy-in from players and making just about everyone on his roster better in the process. Last season, he had the best offense in the NBA. This year, it’s been about the defense. The biggest knock is that he sometimes seems to overthink things, especially in calling timeouts. But his out-of-timeout calls are among the best in the league.
Clifford took an unusual path to NBA coaching, spending more than half his career at the high school and lower-level college levels. But “the third Van Gundy brother” worked his way into this role with dedication and a basketball sense beyond most others. He excels at keeping his teams prepared and finding unique pairings that work while also developing players — almost everyone on the Hornets has clearly grown as a player because of their time with Clifford.
This season has been a clinic on what makes Spoelstra so much more than the coach who won with LeBron James. Seamlessly switching to small-ball when Chris Bosh went down, turning Hassan Whiteside into a defensive monster instead of a stat-hog and convincing Goran Dragic to play a style that works with Dwyane Wade even when he’s better otherwise are all great examples of why Pat Riley has so much faith in Spoelstra. There are occasions where Spoelstra leans too much on Wade or allows some of his role players to get lost offensively, but the two-time champion coach has done a fantastic job in getting this team all the way up to the No. 3 seed, especially without Bosh for most of the year.
This year won’t be the first time Van Gundy matches up against LeBron James’ Cavaliers in the playoffs. The other was in 2009, when his Magic beat the Cavs 4-2 in the Eastern Conference finals. Van Gundy’s reputation is as perhaps the most obsessive and hardest working coach in the NBA, and the effort showed this season as several players grew into themselves. Van Gundy has one of the most defined philosophies in the NBA, but he’s very adaptable in how he implements it. Defense will always be first priority, but this is the most pick-and-roll-reliant team he’s had, with Reggie Jackson and Andre Drummond playing into their strengths.
Stevens may well be the brightest mind in coaching today. Not just NBA coaching. Not just basketball coaching. The 39-year-old shows a thorough mastery of X’s and O’s, with some of the best playcalling and player-maximization strategies around. What’s more impressive, though, is that he has connected with his roster of underdogs and defensive hounds in a way that allows them to really buy in to what he teaches.
The thinking goes that no one connects with players better than Rivers, a former player with a very affable personality. That was on full display when he convinced DeAndre Jordan to stick around and ignore the draw of being a No. 1 option for the Mavericks. What gets ignored is that Rivers has improved in clear ways as a strategist. He calls great out-of-timeout plays and has maximized his starting lineup as well as any coach over the last few years. Rivers’ calming presence allows his teams to play well in the postseason, though that’s been tested the past few seasons with second-round losses.
Everyone raves about Kerr’s communication with his team and staff. He trusts people and therefore makes his job about putting players and assistants in the best positions to shine. He may very well be the least egotistical coach in the NBA, often giving his assistants and players credit for ideas. But he’s more than a manager; Kerr blew up what the Warriors were doing in many ways and continues to tinker. Even when he was injured for the early part of the season, Kerr was making his team better behind the scenes.
Carlisle has led 12 of his 14 teams to the playoffs, but this year was particularly special. Saddled with an aging roster where his two starting wings, the top earners on the team, were coming off major injuries, Carlisle turned Raymond Felton into a defensive ace, Zaza Pachulia into a rebounding machine and J.J. Barea into … an efficient basketball player. He’s known for his X’s and O’s acumen, but Carlisle is adept at getting the most out of players and coming up with solutions on the fly.
There may not be a better coach in NBA history. Popovich has adjusted to three different eras and changed his strategies dramatically every year. This season might be his best — the Spurs set a franchise record for wins and Popovich adjusted major structures in his offense because of the addition of LaMarcus Aldridge. His defensive schemes are working at a historic level despite an offense-heavy roster, and he deserves a good chunk of the credit for turning Kawhi Leonard into a genuine superstar.
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