NBA's Greatest Coaching Tantrums and Freakouts in History

Warren Little/Getty Images

The NBA is not known as much as football or baseball for tirades coming from head coaches, but when they do blow up they don't usually hold anything back.

Back when I was in high school, the coach of my school's basketball team was a very passionate man with quite a high basketball IQ. Being a former basketball player himself, he knew the intricacies of the game.

He knew how to get the best out of the players given to him, sometimes employing some interesting tactics, even designing a play that roped the crowd in to confuse the opposition's players. That, combined with the fact that he was extremely vocal on the sidelines sometimes irked his counterparts on the other side of the floor.

It all came to a head one game against a cross-town rival. It was a hotly contested game with our team coming out on top. As usually the coach was hooting and hollering throughout the game, and as the teams were shaking hands at the end of the game one of the assistant coaches on the other team full on body-checked our head coach, at least that's the story he told after the game. It could have been a slight bump, it could have been a slam, but he sold it like Vlade Divac.

Anyway, that was the biggest blowup I have ever seen first hand from a coach of any kind of sport, and let me tell you it is even more stunning in person.

It seems that basketball has far fewer blowups than other sports, but they are all as interesting and impossible to look away from.

Jerry Sloan

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

For nearly 30 years, Jerry Sloan was as close as you can get to a model citizen in today's NBA.  He had his disagreements on the court with referees, sure, but what coach can say that he hasn't?

That's why it was so shocking that he and Deron Williams got in such a big argument earlier this year that he couldn't stand to be around the young man any longer.

After an argument that the two got into where more than one member of their team was afraid that the two were going to get into a physical altercation, Sloan met with GM Kevin O'Connor and decided it was better to retire than to hang around and deal with any more from Williams.

Joe Lapchick

Former New York Knicks coach Joe Lapchick was known for his occasional outburst back in the day, but one day what he saw on the court supposedly got to him too much.

The story goes that during one particular game he got so upset with a call that while he was reaching for a cup of water he grabbed the whole tray of water and threw it.

In his anger, he was unable to get a good toss on the tray and more likely just slapped the whole thing into the air, because word is that the whole thing came back down and struck him in the head.  I'm sure that cooled him off.

Pat Riley

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

Before he was the evil mastermind behind the Miami Heat, Pat Riley was a terrific coach who was quite a hothead in his early days.

Back in 1996, before David Stern became the fine-happy dictator that he is today, Riley was fined $10,000 for a profanity laden tirade against the officiating of a game where his Miami Heat lost by one point against the Portland Trail Blazers.

Riley ranted, "I'm telling you, that was one royal [expletive), and you can put that any way you want. I have [expletive) had it. It was just, `Make the Heat lose.' You saw it. This has been going on for a while now and it's got to stop."

He was a bit of an early day Mark Cuban that season, as he racked up over $50,000 in fines at that point which was quite substantial for the time in the NBA before Stern attacked people under his employ through their pocketbooks more often than not.

$50,000 seems like a lot, but I'm sure Cuban would look at that number and just think, "Heh, that's cute."

Stan Van Gundy

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

The larger of the Van Gundy brothers is quite a vocal man, and his inclusion in this list is more of a lifetime achievement award than a recognition of one specific tirade.

He is known for sharing his opinion about the lack of fouls called on players against his star center, Dwight Howard, or the lack of flagrant fouls called on players hacking him, or he'll just go off about whatever is irking him on that given day.

One of my favorite rants of his in the past year was about the media anointing Derrick Rose as the MVP halfway through the season.

Van Gundy, after a few days of talking about the merits of Dwight Howard's season went off a bit, saying, "I don't think it's wide open. The media seems to have made their decision, and they're the ones that vote. So I think it's over," Van Gundy said Wednesday night as his Orlando Magic prepared to play the New York Knicks. "I mean, I just listen and read. I think it's over. Derrick Rose has it. I haven't really read or heard a media guy who is going another way at this point. I'd be shocked if he doesn't win it."

George Karl

After one particular game against the New York Knicks, head coach Isiah Thomas accused George Karl of having his Denver Nuggets run up the score.

Karl wasn't having any of that.

He went on a calm, yet expletive-laden tirade defending leaving his starters in (something Isiah did as well) and playing the game down to the last minute. 

Honestly, when anyone is arguing what a basketball coach should do in a certain situation with Isiah Thomas then they win automatically.  Nobody will ever side with Thomas on a coaching debate.

Dan Gilbert

Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Dan Gilbert isn't a coach, but he is the most important non-player on his team, and he is in the media enough to be someone of interest here.

Gilbert's now infamous comic-sans rant was the perfect example of why you should wait at least a day before hitting send on an angry e-mail.

As a Cavalier fan, I was more uplifted than most by Gilbert's letter, as it was the night of The Decision that he sent it out, but I can understand as an outsider looking in that it seemed to be three different flavors of crazy.

Hell, even I thought guaranteeing a title before LeBron was one of the most idiotic things that could have been written, but hey, he's not wrong yet.

Jeff Van Gundy

Jeff Van Gundy easily has the best coaching freak-out in league history.

In the 1998 playoffs, with his Knicks facing off against the Heat and the clock winding down at the end of the game, a fight broke out between Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning.  Naturally, the 5'9", 150 pound Van Gundy sprinted onto the court to break up the fight.

What happened next is what legends are made of.  Van Gundy was forced to the ground when the guy that should be breaking up the fight, Charles Oakley, showed up, at which point he attached himself to Mourning's leg.

This is without a doubt my favorite fight in NBA history.

Avery Johnson

All too often after games in the 2006 Finals, you would see reporters asking Avery Johnson and his players on the Dallas Mavericks about some dubious foul calls. Well Johnson was done with it here.

A reporter from Dallas asked him about his impression of a particular foul call and Johnson lost it, berating the poor guy until he moved on to his next question.

As the clip goes along Johnson's voice got squeakier and squeakier, a tell-tale sign that he is starting to get angry.  It's subtle, but there is a difference between his regular squeaky and angry squeaky.

Mark Cuban

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

While we're on the topic of the 2006 Finals, we might as well talk about Mark Cuban, because that is the series that saw him fined more than any other time in his career.

After game five, in particular, Cuban was fined $250,000 for his comments and actions, putting himself at the center of attention for the series from that point on.

His actions after the game included storming onto the court and venting to referee Joe DeRosa, cursing during the postgame press conference and allegedly screaming at David Stern and league officials.

Apparently (although Cuban denied this report by the Miami Herald) someone heard him shouting at David Stern, "(Bleep) you! (Bleep) you. Your league is rigged."

The initial reaction is that this has to be at least somewhat true, as Cuban was fined a cool half a mil for his antics, but when you go back and think about it, he was fined $200,000 and $100,000 for arguing with referees in the past, so another 50 grand isn't terrible.

David Stern

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

The rants that David Stern is rumored to go on are things legends are made of.

You will never see him rant publicly, but there are times where you can still see rage subsiding in his eyes after something goes terribly awry.  He is great at hiding his emotions and wearing his commissioner face at all times, but behind closed doors, things are seemingly completely different.

The new tell-all book about ESPN coming out documents a few cases where Stern is openly screaming at Mark Shapiro, the former head of programming about everything from airing WNBA games to wanting Marv Albert over Brad Nessler as a play-by-play man and not wanting Steven A. Smith anywhere near his product.

There are stories all around about the wrath of Stern coming down, it's just that many of them are not floating around the Internet as freely as you would think.  My guess is Stern has a watchdog patrolling the web, ready to jump on anyone writing a story about his outrageous outbursts.

With that, I think I should stop typing before he comes to get me.

If you are one of those twitterers, you can follow me @JDorsey33.