Suppose you gave me the following challenge: Given a franchise at some point in NBA history (it could be any point, but let's say 1970, for the sake of example -- 50 years), and given my choice of one (or more) people from any point in NBA history to build around, with the goal of winning as many championships as possible over those 50 years, whom would I pick first?
My answer might be surprising. It's not LeBron or Jordan or Kobe. It's not even Phil Jackson. In this article, I want to talk about how success in basketball is structured.
Player-based success
The first stage, by which I mean the lowest-level, is player-based success, which generally looks like winning a lot of games and maybe a few championships over a relatively short stretch of time. This can be as short as e.g. the SSOL Suns (who were very successful from '05-'10) or even the Pierce/Allen/Garnett Celtics, who made two finals between 2008-2010. Or it can be as long as the Kobe Lakers, stretching from 1997-2016, making seven finals and winning five, or the various teams of Kareem, who won six titles between 1971 and 1989.
Player success has a few notable characteristics: it is short, i.e. on the order of years to at most a decade or two, and it is transient. That last doesn't just mean that the players can physically leave, although they can -- the reason LeBron is not as strong a choice to start our team with as he might initially seem is because he's left his team three times in 17 seasons -- but also that player-based success requires a precise formula of one or more star players as well as surrounding talent... usually (forever qualifying my way around the 2004 Pistons). That is to say, Steve Nash played 18 seasons but I only mentioned six of them because those were the ones in which the Suns were contending, and this situation isn't unusual -- Steph Curry might be the latest example, if the Warriors don't recover, of a phenomenal player whose teams only managed to contend for five years or so.
Finally, player success is low-level. That doesn't just mean that, as I mentioned earlier, the players are the ones who mostly decide the outcome of games, it also means that player success doesn't necessarily reverberate. When LeBron left Cleveland the team didn't get good until he came back, and now that he's gone again they're bad again. Similarly the Suns have been awful since Nash's departure (and if I'm honest a little before). In other words, having had good players doesn't make teams better after those players leave... again, mostly. Maybe this seems obvious, but I'll explain in a minute why it's important.
So what does all that mean? Well, if I take a player as my first pick in this challenge, I might very well win one or even a handful of championships (although equally I might not, on account of transience). But then the player will leave or retire and my team won't be good anymore and won't have a leg up on other teams. Now maybe you can win this competition by picking LeBron or Shaq (or even Steph, although he won't be a good choice until 1980 when the 3-point line is introduced) and blitzing everyone with your hyperathletic superstar and hoping to win a handful of rings that way, but honestly player success is inconsistent and fragile enough that I wouldn't bet on it. So instead, let's take a step up and talk about coaching-based success.
Coaching-based success
Who are the great coaches in NBA history and how did they generally do? Phil Jackson coached for a couple teams and won eleven rings, the highest total in history. Red Auerbach coached for the Celtics (and eventually took on higher-level responsibilities) and won nine titles. Pat Riley won five titles with the Lakers and Heat. Greg Popovich won five over sixteen years with the Spurs. We have seen players accomplish these feats, but it's rare, and most of them have actually been paired with these coaches -- six-ring Jordan and five-ring Kobe had Jackson, 11-ring Russell had Auerbach, Magic had Riley, Duncan had Popovich. Is their success player-based or coach-based, and how can you tell?
First of all, it's obviously a combination. But the best way to tell would be to see how well players can win without great coaches, and how well coaches can win without great players. The problem is we have no real way to evaluate coaching ability outside of team success, so we can't necessarily judge to what extent any given set of players is responsible for their team's success. But we can look at coaches who coached for multiple groups of players and see if they found success consistently.
Coming back to our list: Phil Jackson coached six similar Bulls teams to titles, and two sets of Lakers teams which were fairly different. He applied his and Tex Winter's triangle offense to all three teams and found the most consistent success of any coach. Pat Riley took three different franchises to the NBA finals (the Lakers, the '94 Knicks, and the '06 Heat), winning with two (i.e. two franchises, five rings). Alex Hannum likewise coached the '58 Hawks (playing out of St. Louis), the '67 76ers, and the '69 ABA Oakland Oaks (lmao) to titles.
Clearly, coaching talent carries through, or at least it can at the highest level. A great coach can win with two or even three franchises, decades apart (Jackson's first and last title were 20 years apart, Riley's were 25, Gregg Popovich's were 15). Moreover, coaching success can obviously come with disjunct teams. And while the number of rings won by the top coaches and players are relatively similar, there seems to be more consistency in how a great coach wins than how a great player does.
For one last point here, let's look at the list of the NBA players with the most rings. Bill Russell and seven of his teammates lead the list, and all of them played under Auerbach and/or Russell. Then comes Robert Horry, who won rings under Jackson and Popovich as well as Rudy Tomjanovich in Houston. Cousy is another Auerbach boy, then Kareem, who won four rings under Riley (as well as one under Paul Westhead and one under Larry Costello); Jordan, who won six with Jackson; Pippen, who likewise won with Jackson; George Mikan and a few of his teammates, who won five with John Kundla, whom I haven't mentioned yet because he coached 70 years ago; more Auerbach Celtics and Riley Lakers; Rodman, who won under Jackson and Chuck Daly; Ron Harper, who won under Jackson; Steve Kerr, who won under Jackson and Popovich; Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher, who won under Jackson; and Tim Duncan, who won under Popovich.
That paragraph is staggering. I did not leave anyone out. Apparently, NO player was ever able to win all that much without playing under one or more of a very limited set of coaches. I only covered players with five or more rings, but I promise you it doesn't get all that much more diverse even at four. Having a coach like Auerbach, Jackson, Popovich, Riley, or Kundla is virtually the only way to win more than a handful of rings, and it seems to work much more consistently than having a world-class player, given that none of this long list of world-class players won more than a ring or two without one of these coaches leading the way.
In other words, having a world-class player without a world-class coach historically won't get us more than one or two rings. Having a world-class coach seems like a good bet for at least five.
But why stop there?
Executive-based success
Let's talk about Jerry West.
West is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He played for 14 years with the Lakers, making nine finals but winning only one. Then in 1974 he retired and a few years later became the Lakers' coach, leading them to a decent 145-101 record over three years but with no real playoff success (apart from making the Western Conference Finals in 1977, a feat the Clippers have yet to accomplish).
After he stepped down from his coaching role, West worked as a scout and then GM for the Lakers over the following 22 years. In that time he was largely responsible for creating both the '80s Lakers dynasty, which won five titles, and the '00s Shaqobe dynasty, which won three. (One could also reasonably give him partial credit for the Lakers' '09-'10 championships, spearheaded by Kobe.)
In 2002, West stepped down from the Lakers to manage the Memphis Grizzlies, explicitly because winning with the Lakers was no longer a challenge and he wanted to build up a historically bad team. In his time as GM, he took the Grizzlies from a team that had won between 8 and 23 games to a team that between 2004 and 2006 (three of his last four years with the team) won 50, 45, and 49 games.
West then took a position on the board at Golden State, where under his partial leadership the Warriors grew from a 36-win team to a two-time NBA champion at the time of his leaving in 2017 (the Warriors would of course go on to win a third title in 2018 with the same core West had helped build).
Finally, in 2017, West came to the Clippers, where he has not found success because the team is cursed.
This is maybe (scratch that, definitely) the most unbelievable career of any basketball person. West was directly responsible for nine finals and one championship as a player, nine finals and five rings managing the Showtime Lakers, between three and seven finals and between three and five rings managing the Kobe Lakers (depending on how much credit you want to give him for the '04 loss and the '08-'10 run, which for me is "a lot" and "some" respectively), and three rings and five finals for the Warriors (I'm giving him full credit for 2018 because do to otherwise would be insane). In case you weren't counting, that's a grand total of 30 finals and 14 rings in which West has played at least some part. In case you missed it, I just said 30 finals and 14 rings are substantially attributable to this one guy, including 21 finals and 13 rings as an exec. If West were a franchise, he'd be third in rings (a mile above #4), only three rings and two finals appearances behind the most successful franchise in NBA history. He's almost as successful by himself as the Lakers are as a franchise.
But not quite.
Owner- and franchise-based success
There are only two relevant franchises in NBA history. That is to say, there are only two franchises who are successful on a greater scale than the most successful coaches and execs. The next-most-successful team is the Philadelpha/San Francisco/Golden State Warriors, who won six rings over 72 years and are sort of a much-less-successful Lakers/Celtics kind of success, and then the Bulls and Spurs, who won six and five rings respectively in a very short span and are obviously beneficiaries of player- and coaching-level success.
The Lakers and Celtics both have 17 championships (poggers) spread out over decades. The Lakers have won in the '40s, '50s, '70s, '80s, '00s, '10s, and '20s, and have made appearances in every decade (and under every elected president, albeit not every president). The Celtics have won in the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, and '00s, and have only 21 appearances to the Lakers' 32, because they suck. This is success on a scale even West can't quite imitate (his championships as executive span almost 40 years, but not the 72 that the Lakers' championships do).
We can't pick franchises, although if we could the Lakers would be a pretty easy pick. What we can do is pick owners. But how responsible are the Lakers' owners for the team's success? The two big problems here are first, that the Lakers have had several owners, with a majority of their rings coming under Jerry Buss (10, the Showtime and Kobe-era Lakers teams), and second, that it's very hard to determine what portion of the Lakers' success is attributable to any of these owners (say, Buss). On the other extreme, it's obvious that bad ownership can sink sports teams -- James Dolan is a notoriously bad owner, and the Knicks have been mostly awful under his leadership. But how important is good ownership? What exactly does a good owner do that, say, an average owner doesn't?
The Lakers are a very stable franchise (with a few exceptions -- sorry, Jim), so let's look for a comparison at the second most successful franchise, the Celtics. The Celtics have had basically three periods of sustained success: the Auerbach/Russell teams of the '50s and '60s, the bizarro Havlicek teams of the mid-70s, and the Bird teams of the '80s. Their ownership has sold the team during every one of those runs. Un fucking believable. First, the original owner died in 1964, then the guy who took over sold it again in 1968. Those guys sold it again in 1969, bought it back in 1971, and sold it again in 1972. Two owners later this schmuck sold it in between the Celtics' '70s championships to a guy who sold it after ten months (!!) back to the guy who'd owned it before the schmuck (oh my god) who had also been the partial owner before the guy who--
Okay, you know what? Just take my word for it. The Celtics' ownership has been an incestuous shitshow and none of its owners seem to want to hold onto the team when it's doing well. This mess hasn't seemed to hurt Boston's success much, so it seems reasonable to conclude that decent to good ownership mixed with success at the lower levels is sufficient. After all, Boston's big decline after the '80s coincided conspicuously with Auerbach's loss of interest in management (after a paltry 40 years with the team), suggesting that he probably had the most to do with the team's fall from grace.
So.
Conclusion
Where does success come from in the NBA? Honestly, the best answer is Jerry West.
The second best answer is Red Auerbach. Auerbach coached the Celtics to nine titles and managed them to seven more. Why is this 16 less impressive than West's 14? Primarily because West was successful with so many teams, whereas Auerbach earned all 16 with the Celtics and 11 of them with Russell et al. as players. Also I find success in the pre-free agency, regional draft era less impressive than West's success, which spans from Showtime through to the Warriors dynasty.
The third-best answer is probably Phil Jackson. After that it's a conversation between other coaches (Riley and Popovich spring to mind) and top-end players (guys like Jordan, Kobe, LeBron).
So how do I answer the original question? Which people would I take, and in what order?
Here we go.
1. Jerry West, as GM
I'm tempted to say take him as a player for 15 years and then a GM for 20+, but if we can only get him for one, take him as a GM. This kind of success is unparalleled both in volume (excluding Auerbach) and diversity of team situations. There is no one that I'm more convinced could make our franchise successful. Even if he only sticks around for 20 years, as he did for the Lakers, he could still easily account for 10+ titles. And if we can somehow convince him to stay longer that number will only go up and up. Auerbach is still a phenomenal choice here, and especially since his tenure with the Celtics was (counting coaching) roughly double West's with the Lakers, but I'm just more confident that West will build a successful team here than I am that Auerbach could.
2. Phil Jackson, as coach
I mentioned before that Red Auerbach is #2 overall, but if I'm getting to pick two people, I'm taking Jackson to complement West. Not only do they obviously work well together, but Jackson is one of those great coaches who just seems to win wherever he goes, and we know West will give him the talent. (It's honestly possible that an answer like "Auerbach as scout," or even "Auerbach as GM, West as scout" is even better, but I'm going with Jackson here.)
3. Kobe Bryant
Okay, so I'm just building the 2001 Lakers piece by piece, but hear me out. My first instinct here was LeBron, but I just can't have a guy who's going to come and go every few years as LeBron tends to do. If Cleveland had built as good a team around him as West would have from the start, would he have stayed there forever? Maybe, but my guess would be no. Jordan is an asshole whom I hate and he played too few seasons. Duncan played with too stable of teams -- we never got to see him without a similar supporting structure, whereas we saw Kobe as second option to Shaq, Kobe as co-first option with Shaq, Kobe as part of a superteam in '04, Kobe as solo artist, Kobe with sidekick Gasol, and even Kobe in the nightmare years post-Basketball Reasons, and he was amazing all the way through. He's a loyal player and one of the most successful athletes in NBA history, and he has proven success playing under both West and Jackson. And he's my favorite player of all time. We're going to get 20 years under Kobe, and I'm going to guess we'll win a lot of titles along the way.
4. Tim Duncan
I don't especially like Tim Duncan, but this is the pick. He's too good a complement to Kobe, and Kobe should provide sufficient scaffolding for Tim to be consistently successful. He'll work hard and he won't cause drama, he's unselfish and fairly versatile, and unlike my initial choice of Kareem, he's never going to force his way out because the team isn't meeting his cultural needs. He's also a player with incredible longevity, and again, I'm planning on keeping this core together for 20 years.
5. Hakeem Olajuwon
We have so many options here. We could draft LeBron and hope against hope that he sticks around for his entire career, but I just don't trust him. Likewise we could draft Rodman, but he's a little too much of a journeyman. We could draft an exciting player like Magic or Bird for ten years of perfect basketball, but that's only ten years. Again, I care less about virtually guaranteeing a few titles, and more about stretching our window of serious contention as long as I can possibly make it. Likewise, Scottie Pippen is a poor choice because his prime lasted only around 12 years. Then we can look at guys like John Stockton, an utterly unexciting player whose big draw is that he played 19 years of which about 16 were good. The big problem with Stockton is that I'm not sure how well his style would fit into our team (and specifically Phil Jackson's teams, which typically run the triangle, a point-guard-light offense), and I'm not sure how useful he would be outside of that style.
I picked Hakeem for a few reasons. He played 18 seasons, of which about 15 were good, well outstripping most of the non-Jazz candidates, and was an extremely strong player well into his 30s. He's an all-time great defender while also having the best post game of any big man, and I think his game would complement Duncan's quite well. He has a track record of playing well with another big man (Ralph Sampson), as does Duncan (David Robinson). The formula of one guard and two big men works well at any point in NBA history (the worst it'll be is honestly 2010-2020, by which point they should all be retired, depending on when we start), and works within the triangle as well (Kobe-Gasol-Bynum is a much weaker version of this trio that went to three finals and won two). All we'll really need to complement these three is a decent wing and a decent point guard, ideally one of whom can help Kobe with perimeter defense, and West should supply those fairly easily.
Coda
Beyond this, we can do more or less whatever we want. Scottie Pippen and Magic would be my natural choices for our last two starters, and if we get even more picks, I'd pick up Jerry Buss (and ideally his family) and maybe Red Auerbach in some kind of an executive role. My intuition is that I'm taking ownership too late, and that maybe it's more common than I think for an owner to be on the Dolan end of the Buss-Dolan spectrum; if that's the case, we might want to move Buss up to maybe 5th (I'm not sold enough to take him over Kobe or Duncan). My intuition is also that it's foolish not to have Red Auerbach aboard somewhere if we can get him. He's one of the towering figures in NBA history who has shaped the league. And those are the guys who produce success on the order of decades.
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