Power Ranking the 7 Best Out of Work Coaches

There have already been a few NBA head coaches fired this season, and between now and this offseason we ca expect there will be a few more ob openings created. 

Some of those positions will be filled by new coaches, while other will go to veteran NBA coaches. Some of the current coaches without jobs are voluntarily in retirement and Hall of Fame bound, but who could be enticed to come out of retirement if the job is right. 

Others are coaches that had the wrong job at the wrong time, and due to either a team that didn't correlate with their coaching style, or just plan bad luck, their previous tenure didn't work out. Each of these former coaches has the smarts to coach a winning team and should be considered for any vacancies. 

7. Maurice Cheeks

Maurice Cheeks has two previous stints. First he coached the  the Portland Trail Blazers and then he coached the Philadelphia 76ers. Overall he has a .498 winning percentage. In his best season he coached the Trail Blazers to a 50-32 record in 2003. 

He had the misfortune of having to deal with some head cases both in Portland and Philadelphia, so his demise in both cities isn't entirely on him. 

He has spent the last few years as an assistant coach with the Oklahoma City Thunder where he has been connected with a winning team. 

Cheeks did fairly decent his first two times around, bringing two different teams to the playoffs. He's ready to be given a chance to coach another team. 

6. Flip Saunders

Flip Saunders was fired from the Washington Wizards earlier this year, but that was a case of a square peg being in a round hole. Saunders is a good coach if he has a veteran team around him; he's just not ideally suited for a bunch of selfish young superstars. 

He is tied for 19th on the NBA's all-time win list with 638 and has a career winning percentage of .548, so there is some real coaching ability there, he just needs the right team to be with. He coached the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals and the Detroit Pistons to the Eastern Conference finals. 

If Mike Woodson doesn't work out with the Knicks, Saunders would be a nice fit.  Or perhaps he could land with the Orlando Magic if they end up firing Stan Van Gundy. 

5. Mike D'Antoni

Mike D'Antoni was fired, erp, resigned, erp departed with mutual consent from the New York Knicks. The problem with the Knicks is they didn't give him the team that matched his system, and he couldn't match his style to the players that they gave him. 

That's not to say that he can't coach given the players that can fit his system. John Wall and the Wizards would make for an interesting fit for the system that is reliant first on point guard play. Not every team is a team that D'Antoni could find success with, but the Wizards are one of them. 

4. Nate McMillan

Nate McMillan has 478 career wins and a .514 career winning percentage. He had two stints, first with the Seattle Supersonics, and then with the Portland Trial Blazers. Three times he's had 50 plus win seasons, twice with Portland and once with Seattle. 

In Portland he just ran into one of the all-time most notorious injury bugs. It seemed that every time he turned around someone was getting inured. Add to that the plethora of trades and player turnover and what he accomplished is truly impressive. 

During his seven year tenure, Portland had 66 players suit up for them. Yet in spite of that kind of crazy turnover and injury history, he turned a team that was a 27 win team the year before he arrived into a winning franchise in just two years. His next three seasons the Trail Blazers were a winning team. 

McMillan has coaching chops, he just needs to land somewhere where every big man signed for five years isn't destined to be on the injury list. Granted, it's not  a good fit for him to be on a fast paced offense, but his deliberate style could help a lot of teams. 

3. Larry Brown

Larry Brown won three ABA Coach of the Year awards, one NBA Coach of the Year award, and one NBA Championship with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. 

He has 904 career wins, and has been to the NBA Finals three times. He's one of the greatest "teachers" in the history of the league, having a knack for player development and turning teams around like few have have ever had. 

One team that might make sense for him is the Los Angeles Clippers, who have a ton of talent, but there is plenty of reason for development, and a few veteran players in Chris Paul and Chauncey Billups,  that will help the team to embrace real coaching. 

After Vinny Del Negro, it would be hard to not embrace any real coaching. 

2. Jerry Sloan

A case can be made that Jerry Sloan is the greatest coach in the history of the NBA without a ring. The only question is whether there is even argument that he is. Who else is in the conversation, Donnie Nelson?

Sloan is third all time in NBA wins, fifth in games over .500, and sixth in postseason history. Nelson is the only coach with more wins and no rings. No one in front of him in the other two categories has failed to win a ring. 

Sloan is not only the greatest coach without a ring, he's better than a lot of coaches with a ring. Given the right opportunity though, don't you think he'd like to remove that tagline from his name?

He could fit in with any team that is willing to be coached. He simply knows the game. However his hard-line style wouldn't fit well with any teams that are resistant to actual coaching. 

1. Phil Jackson

Phil Jackson is the greatest coach ever with a ring. Just in case you want to argue that point though, he's the greatest coach ever with 11 rings. You can't argue that point. 

Five of those rings came in the country's second largest city, Los Angeles. The original six came in the third largest city, Chicago. 

What if he went to the Knicks, where he once played (and incidentally won a ring as a player) and won there? If there is a way to bolster the legacy of Jackson, that's it.