When it comes down to being considered a great head coach, you are defined by winning and losing.
Some coaches are able to coach less talented teams to great success, consistently overachieving and maximizing the rosters at hand. Others are able to get star-studded teams to buy in and sacrifice for the greater good, leading to dynasties and prolonged winning. The truly special coaches are able to thrive in both of these environments, adapting to the roster and personnel at hand and still managing to put their teams in positions to succeed.
The NBA currently is filled with multiple great coaches, no matter how much their fanbases may complain about them and wish for them to be fired. Winning in the NBA is hard, winning at the highest level is even harder. And those that do are forever immortalized amongst the greatest ever.
There are only seven active head coaches who have won titles in the NBA, but they aren’t the only ones who get the job done yearly as far as producing a winning team.
Here is our list of the 10 best coaches currently in the NBA.
Honorable Mention: Ime Udoka, Rick Carlisle, Frank Vogel
11.
When it comes down to being considered a great head coach, you are defined by winning and losing.
Some coaches are able to coach less talented teams to great success, consistently overachieving and maximizing the rosters at hand. Others are able to get star-studded teams to buy in and sacrifice for the greater good, leading to dynasties and prolonged winning. The truly special coaches are able to thrive in both of these environments, adapting to the roster and personnel at hand and still managing to put their teams in positions to succeed.
The NBA currently is filled with multiple great coaches, no matter how much their fanbases may complain about them and wish for them to be fired. Winning in the NBA is hard, winning at the highest level is even harder. And those that do are forever immortalized amongst the greatest ever.
There are only seven active head coaches who have won titles in the NBA, but they aren’t the only ones who get the job done yearly as far as producing a winning team.
Here is our list of the 10 best coaches currently in the NBA.
Honorable Mention: Ime Udoka, Rick Carlisle, Frank Vogel
10.Mike Brown - Sacramento Kings
Career Record: 395-250
2022-2023 record: 48-34
You can't leave the NBA's reigning Coach of the Year off this list. You can't leave off someone who led the Kings to the first playoff appearance since 2006. It's incredible to think that the Kings looked like a cursed franchise the past two decades with no hope of a future. Mike Brown turned that around in one season. It wasn't like they were a fringe playoff team that made it through the Play-In either, they were the No. 3 in the Western Conference surpassing teams like the Suns, Lakers, and Warriors. Those Warriors did end up eliminating the Kings in seven games but it was nothing to be ashamed of for a franchise that won 30 games the previous season.
9.Taylor Jenkins - Memphis Grizzlies
Career Record: 179-130
2022-2023 record: 51-31
Taylor Jenkins has got off to a terrific start in his coaching career, leading a young Memphis Grizzlies team to three winning seasons in four years. The past two seasons, the Grizzlies have finished second in the Western Conference. It's been impressive to watch considering most of the core of the Grizzlies are young players including the now All-Star duo in Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr.
While you expect a team that finishes top two in the West to go deeper in the playoffs, there's not much you can do as a coach when your superstar goes down with injury like Morant did in 2022 and then played with a serious injury this playoff run. It also doesn't help as a very young team when you run into two championship franchises with the two greatest players of this generation in Steph Curry and LeBron James. For that, we cannot penalize Jenkins but as this team gets older, the expectations will continue to raise especially with all the off-the-court turmoil Morant has faced.
8.Quin Snyder - Atlanta Hawks
Career Record: 385-279
2022-2023 record: 13-15
For the last seven seasons, Quin Snyder coached teams have not missed the playoffs. In Utah he made the playoffs for six consecutive seasons from 2016-2022, and despite coming on board to coach the Hawks late in the year, he still got them into the playoffs after a stunning play-in win against the Miami Heat. He doesn’t have a championship, he might not be the biggest name in the league, but year after year his teams are amongst the best in the NBA.
There is something to be said about consistency, and Snyder is a model of that. The next step for him to push further up this list is to make a Western Conference Finals appearance, and possibly win a title. He might be the most underrated coach currently in the NBA, but if he secures some hardware, it won’t be that way for much longer.
7.Monty Williams - Detroit Pistons
Career Record: 367-336
2022-2023 record: 45-37 (with Phoenix)
Williams was recently fired by the Suns before signing a massive deal to become the Pistons next head coach. Though he was let go by the Suns, Monty oversaw a revival of the franchise, with the team making the NBA Finals in 2021, posting the NBA’s best record in 2022, and falling in the second round to the eventual Western Conference champion Denver Nuggets this season. He is a culture builder, and well-respected across the NBA. The Pistons are in need of a complete overhaul, and might be a few seasons away from legitimately competing for a playoff spot. But Williams is the guy for the job, and if he can turn one of the NBA’s most disappointing franchises of the last decade back into a playoff contender, he will have taken his third different franchise to the playoffs. No easy feat.
6.Nick Nurse - Philadelphia 76ers
Career Record: 227-163 (1 NBA Title)
2022-2023 record: 41-41 (with Toronto)
A lot of people will attribute Nick Nurse's championship to the greatness of Kawhi and the absence of Kevin Durant in the Finals along with the Klay Thompson's ACL injury but Nick Nurse built an identity himself during that run. He's a coach that will exaggerate his schemes and do drastic things not a lot of coaches would do in order to win. Who can forget when he issued his defense to play a box-and-one on Steph Curry. He's even pulled that out in regular season games at points. That Raptors team was not the favorite to come out the East that season and even following Kawhi's departure, they put up another 50-win season. His only true blemish in his young coaching career was the 2020-21 season when the Raptors won 27 games. But even that season can be excused as the Raptors had to play their home games in Florida and that was probably worse circumstances than playing in the actual bubble.
5.Gregg Popovich - San Antonio Spurs
Career Record: 1366-761 (5 NBA Titles)
2022-2023 record: 22-60
Pop will go down as one of top three greatest coaches in the history of the game and has an argument to maybe be considered the greatest ever. When he's had the talent, his team is going to win games. We've seen his whole career and even when his core of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, and Kawhi Leonard left, the Spurs still reeled off a 48-win season. With the franchise in full tank mode, Pop's record and maybe some's view of him has taken a bit of a hit but there's questioning his greatness and what he's done in his career. The end is probably near for the legend but with Victor Wembanyama on the way, Pop could have one last attempt at making the Spurs a dominant franchise again.
4.Ty Lue - Los Angeles Clippers
Career Record: 261-186 (1 NBA Title)
2022-2023 record: 44-38
Ty Lue just wins. After taking over as head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers during the 2015-2016, Lue oversaw an NBA championship in 2016 and two more Finals appearances in 2017 and 2018. If the qualifier for his success in Cleveland was “well, he coached LeBron James,” that can’t be said about his tenure with the Clippers. He guided them to their first ever Western Conference Finals appearance in 2021, while Kawhi Leonard was sidelined with a torn ACL. He has only missed the playoffs in one season he was the head coach for a team (2022), and his teams routinely compete at the highest level once they get in the playoffs. He hasn’t been able to reach the Finals in LA, in large part due to Leonard and Paul George not being healthy consistently. But he still manages to have the Clippers amongst the best of the West year-in and year-out.
3.Mike Malone - Denver Nuggets
Career Record: 406-337
2022-2023 record: 53-29 (NBA Finals Appearance)
Mike Malone has developed into one of the most vocal coaches in the league recently. With his constant criticism of the media's coverage of his team, Malone has been seeking some respect and quite frankly, he's earned every bit a respect. The Denver Nuggets have had winning percentage above .560 for the last six seasons and while they're often evaluated off postseason success, we can't ignore the string of the injuries this franchise has had during their playoff runs. We saw Nikola Jokic single-handedly try to beat the eventual champions in the Golden State Warriors last season in a playoff series. They've just been unlucky but the year they finally had all their pieces available, they absolutely shredded the West. In what was seen as one of the most competitive chases for a title in a long time, there was no team that could really put up a fight against the Nuggets. The Suns were the only team to take them to six games and in that sixth game, they showed the Suns were never on their level. It helps having a two-time MVP and arguably the best player in the world on your team but Mike Malone's success in Denver started before Jokic took that leap.
2.Steve Kerr - Golden State Warriors
Career Record: 473-238 (4 NBA Titles)
2022-2023 record: 44-38
If you wanted to make an argument for Kerr being the best current coach in the NBA, there is a compelling one to be made. Before losing to the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals this season, he had never lost a Western Conference playoff series as the head coach of the Warriors. Since taking over as head coach in 2014, he has overseen four championship teams while guiding the franchise to six NBA Finals appearances. Since 2019, it has been a bit uneven for Kerr at the helm, with the Warriors missing the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, winning it all in 2022, and then struggling through most of the regular season before a disappointing 2023 playoff exit. With that said, there is no denying that he is one of the truly elite coaches currently, and of all-time.
1.Erik Spoelstra - Miami Heat
Career Record: 704-491 (2 NBA Titles)
2022-23 Record: 44-38 (NBA Finals Appearance)
Is there anyone who has done more with less than Erik Spoelstra? In the early start of his coaching career, he flew under the radar because attributed his success to the 'Heatles' era with three of the 15 best players in the association on one team including two top five players in LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. Well, in the words of Steph Curry: 'What they gonna say now?' Spoelstra has had only two losing seasons since his first season in 2008 and he's made the NBA Finals with three different teams. You can say Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo were common denominators from the bubble team that made a run but the role players surrounding them were completely different. Not to mention, Tyler Herro was healthy during the 2020 NBA Finals run.
Spo has done nothing but win regardless of who has been on the floor. He's got the most of his players whether they were first round picks like Herro or undrafted players like Max Strus, Gabe Vincent, and Duncan Robinson. You give Spo a roster and he'll get the most out of his guys. Unlike some coaches, Spo isn’t afraid to adjust. Whether it was throwing a high dosage of zone at the Celtics or adjusting his starting lineups with Kevin Love and Caleb Martin all playoffs, Spo’s strategies will never remain the same.