Auerbach, Jackson, Riley: Great Only Because They Had Great Players? No Way!

“If I had players like Bill Russell, Bob Cousy and John Havlicek, I could win multiple NBA championships.”  Does this sound familiar? 

Let's not forget this oldie but goodie, “who couldn’t win with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.“  Oh and there’s more, fans have said that “Phil Jackson and Pat Riley just rolled the ball out there and said Kobe, Shaq, Magic and Kareem do your thing.”

I’m not sure who said these things, but we have all heard different variations of these quips.

What I’m getting at is this, do Coaches like Phil Jackson, Red Auerbach and Pat Riley deserve to be called three of the greatest coaches in NBA history even though they arguably had some of the greatest players of all time?

I’ll answer that, Hell yeah!

The great Jerry Sloan had John Stockton and Karl Malone: how many rings does Jerry have?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not going to bash every coach who has failed with great players. It wouldn’t be fair.

Now it’s time to talk about these three legends.

The NBA is a game full of prima donnas who can’t be told what to do and can’t be coached or share the ball with other stars.Players have huge personalities and egos and at times seem to just play for the money. 

The three guys mentioned above were masters at not letting that happen, They knew how to stroke their egos and get those superstars to play together.

These three coaches had plenty of superstars and egos to go around, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Dennis Rodman and Ron Artest just to name a few.

To go the other way, something can also be said for Chuck Daly and his “Bad Boys,” that team had one big star in Isiah Thomas and the rest of the team was filled with good not great players. 

I can already hear Detroit Pistons fans screaming at me saying what about Joe Dumars and Dennis Rodman and guys like that. It’s just my opinion, that’s all.

Gregg Popovich had great players to help him win four titles and “Pop” could probably be mentioned in the same breath as the big three that I’m referring to as well as John Kundla, but for now we will stick to them. 

NBA.com listed the top 10 NBA coaches of all time. Red is number one, Phil is number five and Pat is number nine.  Oh and by the way, Chuck Daly is number two.  I see it much much differently, obviously.

Others on the list in no particular order include John Kundla, Bill Fitch, Red Holzman, Don Nelson, Jack Ramsey and Lenny Wilkins.

Each one of the three coaches in this discussion had the common denominator of having great players, but they all did what they did in their own way.

Red Aurebach built his teams along with owner Walter Brown, and some would argue that Jackson and Riley inherited their teams.

It makes no difference either way and this is why.

The coaches before Phil Jackson and Doug Collins had their chances with star players.

Del Harris had O’Neal and Bryant together for two years and could not get it done. 

Doug Collins had Jordan and Pippen together for two of his three years with the Bulls. When Jackson took over for Collins, he had a one year gestation period with the Bulls and then rattled off six out of eight championships

In Los Angeles, there was no "get to know you" time, he got started right away on his third three-peat accomplishing the task in his first three years.

For Pat Riley, things were a little different.  Riley took over for Paul Westhead during the 81,82 season. Westhead did win a title in 1980 but could not continue to win so Riley took over and the rest is history. 

Riley dealt with the personalities of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the exploits of James Worthy in order to win four rings with the Lakers.

As the head coach of the New York Knicks, Riley never won fewer than 50 games and he won the Eastern Conference Championship.

Pat Riley also has “one for the thumb,” he also won a title with the Miami Heat, taking over for Stan Van Gundy during the season. Again, winning where another could not.

Now it’s time to talk about Red Auerbach. Eight titles in a row and nine championships in 10 years, enough said.

Yeah I know he had legends like Bill Russell, Bob Cousy and John Havlicek. I know there are others such as Sam Jones and Tommy Heinsohn, but I have to stop there or we’ll be here all night.

Red didn’t just put these guys on the court and then go collect his rings.  He had to deal with the ego of Russell and the personalities of Heinsohn and Cousy.

He had to to put up with extreme racism in regards to Russell and he hehad to find ways of keeping Russell from breaking down during that journey towards nine championships.  These issues are talked about in length in Russell’s book “Red and Me.” 

The book also talks about how Red learned to cater to all the different types of players and personalities in order to construct the perfect environment for winning.

Construct the perfect environment for winning is the perfect phrase to describe how these three coaches were able to be so successful.

By now, it’s obvious that I hold these coaches in high regard, and how silly I think it is to say they are great only because they had great players.

25 rings!

I would love to hear what you all have to say on the matter.

25 rings, guys, 25 rings!