Six People

Remember when I posted this article? In it I explained how Jerry West and Red Auerbach are more responsible than anyone else for their teams winning championships. Well, in this article I'm going a step further: I'm going to show why a majority of championships are attributable to one or more of the same six people. Six people who have decided, or had a hand in deciding, more than half of all championships in NBA history.

Let's go.

Jerry West.

West was a player on the Lakers from 1961 to 1974. In that span he made nine finals and won one. He coached the Lakers to okay success, then worked in the front office from '79 through to '02, in which span the Lakers made 12 finals and won 8. The core he had helped put together made and lost another Finals in '04, and Kobe, a player he was largely responsible for bringing to the Lakers, was a key part of teams that made three straight finals from '08 to '10, winning two. I'm giving West enough credit for those Finals to count them.

From LA, West went to Memphis, making the team better but not making the Finals, and finally to Golden State, in 2011. He left the team in 2017, but the roster he'd assembled made five finals, winning three.

Running Total: 30 Finals, 14 Championships

Red Auerbach.

Auerbach was a coach and GM, then just a GM, and finally a higher-level exec for the Celtics from 1950 (really '51) to around 1990, at which point he lost interest in being heavily involved in the Celtics' affairs. Consequently I'm willing to give him credit for everything through that time, but not the Big 3 era in '08-'10 (i.e. I'm not giving him partial credit for the drafting of Paul Pierce in 1998, which was the only real Big 3-related acquisition before Auerbach's death in 2006).

Final Total: 19 Finals, 16 Championships

Phil Jackson.

Jackson played as a minor player on the champion Knicks of '70 and '73, although I'm not giving him credit because in '70 he was injured all year (but still received a ring) and in '73 he was a minor player and not a contributor on the level that we're talking about for this article. (I'm not interested in dividing up championships into "shares," but it's fair to say that most of these guys constitute a sine qua non, i.e. if they weren't or hadn't been involved their teams likely wouldn't have won. I don't think Jackson in '73 meets that criterion. I do think West in '72 does, which is why I'm counting that ring for him.)

Anyway, after the Knicks Jackson coached for a number of teams, notably the Bulls (from 1990-1998) and the Lakers (from 2000-2011, minus '05), making 13 Finals and winning 11 Championships in the process. It's worth noting, though, that 7 of those Finals and 5 of the Championships overlap with West (and in fact Jackson in a sense "firms up" the latter three Kobe/Gasol Finals and makes them unequivocally count for this list), so I'll note Phil's total and then those championships of Phil that I haven't otherwise attributed.

Final Total: 13 Finals, 6 unique; 11 Championships, 6 unique

Pat Riley.

Riley played for the Lakers in the '70s (although I'm not counting their Finals appearances in '72 or '73 for Riley for the same logic as Jackson's, and because they're already covered by West). Then he coached for the team as an assistant and then head coach from '80 to '90. Following that, he went to the Knicks from '92 to '95, then the Heat from '96 to '08 minus '04 and '05. In that time, and through to the present, he has served as an executive with the Heat as well.

Consequently, Riley gets credit for the '80s Lakers successes (which we're already attributing to West, but which constitute 8 Finals and five rings (n.b. Riley was gone by the Lakers' '91 Finals, and as a coach didn't have enough to do with that team to get credit, not that it matters)), as well as those of the Knicks (a Finals appearance in '94) and Heat (6 appearances and three titles since '06, including most recently an appearance and loss in '20).

Running Total: 15 Finals, 7 unique; 8 Championships, 3 unique

John Kundla.

Time to go way back in time. Kundla was the coach of the Lakers from 1948 to 1959, leading them to six Finals and five Championships (n.b. the Lakers also technically won the 1948 NBL championship under Kundla, but we're not counting it because it was technically a different league, and I'm certainly not bringing in the ABA either).

Final Total: 6 Finals, 5 Championships

Gregg Popovich.

Finally. Popovich coached (and managed) the Spurs to their only six Finals appearances, winning five.

Running Total: 6 Finals, 5 Championships

Tally: These six people, between them, accumulated 74 Finals appearances* and 49 Championships.

While all 49 of those championships are unique (in other words, these six guys have unequivocally accounted for 49 of the 74 total championships in NBA history), those 74 appearances do run into each other (i.e. we're not counting overlaps with the same team, but with OPPOSING teams we are.) For instance, West's Finals appearances as a player were almost all playing against Auerbach's Celtics, and in the '80s, Auerbach (as Celtics GM), West (as Lakers GM), and Riley (as Lakers coach) butted heads in several Finals. So how much overlap is there (i.e. how many Finals included one or more of these guys on either side)? And how many Finals didn't feature at least one of these guys?

Overlap:

1959 - Kundla vs Auerbach
1962, '63, '65, '66, '68, '69 - West vs Auerbach
1984, '85, '87 - West and Riley vs Auerbach
1991 - West vs Jackson
2013, '14 - Popovich vs Riley

So in total, 13/74 Finals featured one or more of these six people on each team.

(Fun fact, and it doesn't count, but in '70 and '73 West's Lakers met player!Jackson's Knicks in the Finals.)

Finals Without the Six:

You can just do the math and determine 74-13 = 61, so the answer's 13. But if you're wondering:

1947 - Stags vs Warriors
1948 - Bullets vs Warriors
1951 - Royals vs Knicks
1955 - Pistons vs Nationals
1956 - Pistons vs Warriors
1967 - Warriors vs 76ers
1971 - Bucks vs Bullets
1975 - Warriors vs Bullets
1977 - Blazers vs 76ers
1978 - Sonics vs Bullets
1979 - Sonics vs Bullets
1990 - Blazers vs Pistons
1995 - Rockets vs Magic

A few quick notes. First of all, I love how many legendary teams are on here -- the '67 76ers (that's the one Wilt team that got past the Celtics) and the '71 Bucks (that's the Kareem/Oscar Robertson team) stand out, and the '90 Pistons and '95 Rockets get talked about a little. Second, it's astounding that every single Finals since 1995 has one or more of our six. That's by far the longest streak in NBA history, at 25 years (second-longest was 10 years from '57-'66), and two of our six were retired or dead. It was all Jackson, Popovich, West, and Riley. I wonder what's causing this, other than a confluence of those four guys being active at the same time. Finally, it's interesting that the '50s and '70s are the decades that we mostly miss, but it makes sense -- Kundla was the only one of our six around for most of the '50s (Auerbach shows up for the first time in the '57 Finals). As for the '70s, that's before Riley, Jackson, or Popovich really showed up as coaches, and West was in his awkward transition between player and exec, so you're really only getting West's player Finals and Auerbach's two titles.

Who Else?

So it's obviously tempting to try to fill the gaps here. And we CAN -- Eddie Gottlieb, Les Harrison, Charles Eckman, someone in the 6ers organization, someone in the Bullets' organization (I can't find a name and I'm not super eager to look), Chuck Daly, and Rudy Tomjanovich could potentially get us to 74/74 appearances with 13 total people (n.b. I'm assuming there are some important people in common through a few of these teams, but I don't know who ran the front office of e.g. the Bullets in the '70s). But none of those guys are really qualified for this list. The point of what we're doing here is to isolate the people most responsible for championships. Unless there really is one guy in common through those four Bullets teams (I don't think there is -- they had three coaches through those four finals -- and even if there was, they'd be 1-3 in Finals and a far stretch from our LEAST successful member, the 5-1 John Kundla), these are basically just random years when our guys just weren't quite there.

We can obviously get to 74/74 rings too with quite a lot more work, but again, there's no one I can find who was responsible for more than two (MAYBE three) rings in that span, and that's just not a level of success that's terribly interesting to me. It's possible there's some exec I'm missing who went from team to team and ended up playing a role in five or more rings outside of the Big Six's sphere, but I seriously doubt it. The teams that won the other 25 championships are a really random assortment. The Warriors have 11 total appearances, but never more than two in a decade (until West showed up). The Sixers likewise show up a couple times but not really in a short span. And then you have a bunch of one- or two-off teams that captured lightning in a bottle: a brief flush of talent along with a down year for our Six. Think the '70s Knicks or the mid-'90s Rockets (the LAST Finals that didn't feature one or more of our Six).

Finally, there are obviously people we can pick up who overlap hugely with one or more of these six guys. For instance, Tex Winter coached under Jackson for all but one of Jackson's championship teams, meaning he's more accomplished than several people on this list as an assistant coach. And Winter in particular played a huge role in organizing the offenses on those teams. But ultimately we're looking for the people who stand out, and to do so I can't include every overlap. This is also the reason you don't see any players -- Bill Russell won 11 championships, yes, but we're giving the credit to Auerbach for the purposes of this exercise, because we can see that Auerbach extended his winning tradition far beyond Russell's tenure. And there's no player who had close to this level of impact without sharing it with one or more coaches.

Coda.

One quick note.

With these six guys, we got to 74 appearances and 49/74 championships. But with only the first four (West, Auerbach, Jackson, and Riley), we could have gotten to 62 appearances and 39/74 championships, which is obviously still more than half. Moreover, the gap between our fourth-most-successful person (Pat Riley, with 15 Finals and 8 Championships) and the last two (6 Finals and 5 Championships apiece) is relatively large. This is particularly interesting because Popovich and Kundla are also the most limited on this list with respect to role (they were both coaches, although Popovich also manages and Kundla had at least some role in management) and team (they both worked for the same team for their whole (relevant) careers and in the same role). In other words, we really have four people of massive scope and two of very large scope. Popovich and Kundla are clearly the LEAST impressive of these six, but my inclination was to include them, if only because they're still much more impressive than anyone else.

Similarly, Popovich and Kundla have by far the weakest cases to even be on this list, because you can make the argument that they were only successful because of their players (Duncan and to a lesser extent Parker, Ginobili, and Robinson for Popovich, and Mikan et al. for Kundla). All the other guys here are very clearly more successful than any of their players (the closest thing to dubious credit would be Tex Winters, again, as assistant coach for Jackson, and I'm simply going with Jackson on that one). Again, I'm choosing to include them. An argument in favor of each: Popovich is obviously largely responsible for the Spurs' consistent success as a franchise, which spans from early in Duncan's career through well into his decline. And Kundla did in fact make a Finals without Mikan (in '59), he just lost.

Finally, Kundla chose to stay in Minnesota when the Lakers moved to LA. It's very possible that if he had gone with the team, he would have shared in a lot of West's successes, and maybe even gotten the team over the top (who knows?). These hypotheticals aren't really the focus of this article, but they're worth noting.

Which All-NBA First Team is Best?

 I'm not going to link them all; you can find them here. But I'll go through and pull out what I consider to be the best team from each era and compare them.

1962:
Oscar Robertson
Jerry West
Elgin Baylor
Bob Pettit
Wilt Chamberlain

This is as good as it gets in the 60s. We're taking this team over the '67 team (which had Barry over Pettit) by a nose. Barry is probably a better player than Pettit, but Pettit's a true 4 who fits better, possibly, alongside our scoring backcourt. I don't really know though. I've obviously never watched him play.

1988:
Magic Johnson
Michael Jordan
Larry Bird
Charles Barkley
Hakeem Olajuwon

That's right, we just skipped 25 years into the future. That's because most of the teams in the middle had clear weak points (to name a few guys I've literally never heard of: Gus Williams, Marques Johnson, Truck Robinson, David Thompson, Dave Bing). This team does not. It basically outclasses every team that came before it, including, unfortunately, our '62 heroes. It's genuinely pretty hard for me to imagine any team beating this one, either. The offense is fantastic, the defense isn't amazing but Hakeem, Jordan, and Bird should do okay, and any team with Magic, Jordan, Bird, and Hakeem is going to outclass just about anyone else on pure talent. Slight edge over the '87 team, which had McHale over Barkley.

2006:
Steve Nash
Kobe BEAN Bryant
LeBron James
Dirk Nowitzki
Shaquille O'Neal

I think this is as good a team as we're getting for Kobe. Past here the lack of a center is gonna bite us. This team is obviously insane -- the shooting is there, the defense is sort of there. Passing. Offensively, this team's probably as good as anyone.

2008:
Chris Paul
Kobe Bryant
LeBron James
Kevin Garnett
Dwight Howard

If you like defense, this is about the best team in history. I like defense, and it is possible this team beats all others for that reason alone.

All other teams are trash.

Hybrids

The best starting five but each position we get to use a hybrid of two players. We're being fairly but not totally strict about positions and we're not reusing players. The players bring their pluses but not their minuses -- two players with bad passing will take whosever is better, and two players with complementary skills in the same category (e.g. Steph's distance shooting plus Kobe's midrange) will bring the best of both.

PG: Steph Curry / Chris Paul

If we were to define our Ideal Point Guard Skillset, it would probably look something like Shooting -- Passing -- Defense. For Shooting there are a few options: Steph is first by far, and Nash is like a much lower-volume Steph (and consequently has nowhere near the impact through his shooting that Steph does). For Passing we'd ideally like to see Magic or Nash, but Paul isn't that far behind. And for Defense, my traditional choice is Payton but Paul has been so good while defending against by far the best, quickest, and most athletic group of point guards we've ever seen that I'm actually not convinced he's that much worse. So we're compromising here a little bit.

How could we possibly look to improve? Nash/Payton is always an option, but we lose the impact of Steph's shooting. Initially I was going to go Steph/Payton, but I think the difference between Paul's passing and Steph/Payton's is a little bigger than the difference between Payton's defense and Paul's.

SG: Kobe Bryant / Ray Allen

This one is a little strange. We still like the Shooting -- Passing -- Defense triad, but with less emphasis on Passing and more on Shooting (and particularly we'd like to see versatility in scoring -- finishing at the rim and midrange scoring ability are desirable here). But the shooting guard position is a little weird. We have Kobe and Jordan at the top, then like Wade, Harden, Jerry West... It's a mess. And there are no outstanding defenders up there. We could talk about like Tony Allen, but then you're settling for Kobe or like James Harden (eww) on offense, and I think we can do a little better.

Kobe's defense is good enough for me here, and his midrange scoring and finishing is in my opinion a little better developed and more sophisticated than Jordan's. As far as distance shooting, my initial inclination was Klay Thompson, but prime Allen was about as productive on similar efficiency with a lot more of his own shot creation: Thompson's % of 3s assisted in '16 was 92% compared to '06 Allen's 75%. Of course neither is elite -- '16 Steph, amazingly, was assisted on only 55% of his threes (!!) and '19 James Harden, the ultimate 3-point chucker, was assisted on only 16% of his threes. I think we're okay with our 2-guard settling somewhere in the middle here. Allen will work fine.

Actually I want to take a second and marvel at those percentages. 16% for Harden!! 92% for Thompson!! What the hell!! Okay I'm done.

SF: LeBron James / Kevin Durant

What is missing from LeBron? He's the most perfect basketball player we've ever seen, and hence both a very forgiving and very challenging player to work with in this exercise. Do we want to improve his already-strong shooting with someone like Bird? Improve his shooting and scoring with Durant (spoilers: yes)? Improve his defense (slightly?) with Kawhi or Bowen or something? Improve his passing with, uh, maybe no one because he's probably the best passing non-guard of all time?

Anyway, what we decided we wanted to do is improve his shooting and scoring. Durant has a very complete offensive game and patches up the closest thing LeBron has to a weakness: inconsistent three-point shooting. Durant isn't exactly the picture of consistency either, but his numbers skew better. Take it for what it is: a marginal improvement on what was already basically an ideal player.

PF: Dennis Rodman / Larry Bird

This one was tricky until I remembered that Bird was basically half PF and qualified. Rodman is basically an ideal player for this exercise: he's the best defensive PF ever and the best rebounding PF ever, so all we needed was the PF with the most complete offensive game, rebounds aside. But that's not immediately obvious -- guys like Garnett and Duncan are great but generally better on defense; Karl Malone was extremely productive but didn't have the range or the passing skill I'm looking for. So who's the answer, right? It's Bird. The answer is Bird. Passing, scoring, range. That's it. I did it.

(Swear to god I looked up Jokic's 3pt% before I remembered. Spoilers: it's not great. Also he's a center apparently.)

C: Shaquille O'Neal / Hakeem Olajuwon

Center is a complicated position. There's unending talent but it's not easy to divide the skillset up into anything more specific than like Offense / Defense. On the Offensive end, we essentially have two choices: take a guy with a lot of skill and decent range like Hakeem, or we take a steam engine who can just score two points fourteen times a game with extreme consistency. My sense is that we're a little better off going with Shaq here, if only because there is no center in history we'd rather have taking a shot from outside 3 feet than any of the other four guys we're starting here.

Defensively it's simpler. Hakeem or Ben Wallace? Honestly, my sense is that Wallace is a little better. That said, he doesn't have quite the same defensive versatility and his best years came playing with a defensive juggernaut stacked top to bottom with talent (the '04 Pistons had four of the top 25 and seven of the top 80 players by DWS that year, for a very rough approximation). Additionally, since we're only taking the best from each player, it's nice to get Hakeem's midrange (shaky though it may be) to pair with Shaq's dominance at the rim. Ideally we'll see some decent judgment here and probably not as many midrange shots as Hakeem took, but it's not clear where we're getting that good judgment from. Maybe Wallace is better just because he's never going to take midrange shots, and neither is Shaq. But I generally think that more skill is better than less, so let's maximize what we can.

Coda: If you buy into the "Ben Simmons is a Passing Genius" myth (I don't) then Simmons/Steph starts to look really fun, and it's current players. Harden/Kobe would be fun to watch if only to see what the shot selection looks like. Wilt/Wallace was a brief thought. Steph/Magic is absolutely disgusting (in a good way) on offense, and (in a bad way) on defense. Part of me wanted to use Garnett/Wallace, but it felt dishonest to characterize Garnett, who overwhelmingly played PF, as a center. That said, I trust Garnett's midrange more than Hakeem's.

Building an NBA Team

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.

still fire pete

 lmao look at this defense. what a schmuck

in other news, the lakers won!! that's #17 baby! and also rafa won! that's #20 baby!! so we've got 38 titles between the three of us and the seahawks have 1 of those.

pete's loyalty has always been his weakness and the downfall of our teams. he just lets his guys stay until they get hired out from under him, no matter how godawful they are. terrible defense, only okay offense, no scoring in the first half. disgusting.

nadal was really good though. god of clay etc. i think hes the goat because fed got a bunch of easy titles early in his career and joke got to win some while fed and rafa were old and injured and infirm. rafa is the only one whose whole career has been going up against one or two of the goats all the time. people shit on him because he's so dominant on clay specifically but they can suck my dick specifically.

pete is just surrounded by sycophantic yes men who tell him hes great and the most brilliant coach and so we've seen so many years of seahawks mediocrity (medihawkcrity) and yes i know we're 4-0 still for the moment but he really has done nothing to improve the team since TWENTY MOTHERFUCKING TWELVE like HOW can you have a coach do NOTHING to make his team better for EIGHT YEARS and be like wow haha what a coach? i guess he fired bevell and that clearly worked out. also the ol coach whose name i have already purged from my oh no wait it's cable. anyway fuck pete fire that mark ass bitch peace

oh wait hold up russell wilson is doing a thing. god i love that man. the sole bright spot in some dark times. and yes our 4-0 start is a dark time for me. okay my two other favorite "teams"/athletes just won their respective championships the seahawks are sluffin

god im not gonna be able to publish this until the game's over. wilson is fucking up so bad rn lol he cant do anything. 4th and 10 fucking god dammit what the FUCK man what the actual FUCKING SHIT HOLY FUCK

bummer. okay. 4th and 10 baby. let's go.

HOLY SHIT THAT'S A COMPLETION BABY DK METCALF IS MY DAD HOLY FUCKIN FUCK WHAT THE FUCK LET'S FUCKING GO BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY THAT WAS A FOURTH AND MOTHERFUCKING TEN LET'S FUCKING GO HOLY SHIT WHAT A GOD

WILSON INCOMPLETE god what a loser. jfc what a punk

69 seconds lol

SIXTY SECONDS SLIM SHADY YOURE ONNNNNN

oh my god. no fuckin pressure holy shit. two huge blowouts and now this. jfc. fuck.

COMPLETION! FIRST AND GOAL AT THE SEX YARD LINE HOLY FUCK

holy shit

incomplYEET

let's fucking go baby

WHAT??!? WHAT THE FUCK?? THAT WAS A FUCKING TOUCHDOWN FUCK YOU MAN SUCK MY BALLS WHAT THE FUCK??!? THAT'S A MOTHERFUCKING TOUCHDOWN WHAT THE SHIT!?!??!

holy fuck jesus fucking christ

what the fuck was that from russ on third down? horrible horrible throw what the shit fourth and goal jesus christ what the fuck are we gonna fucking lose this after all that are you kidding me? i was gonna end this article saying "dont fire pete" if we won but now im thinking were not gonna win because holy shit this is horrible let's fucking go baby

who do you trust? i trust russ. let's go.

PUNT IT

OH MY GOD

HOLY SHIT HE DID IT

WHAT

WHAT

WHAT

OH MY GOD

RUSSELL FUCKING WILSON

OH MY FUCKING GOD

UNBELIEVABLE

MY OH MY

WOW

wow. fifteen seconds. wow.

unreal.

im still scared. ten seconds. our defense is that bad.

mmnnnnhhhnnh

is that a fumble???

oh huh okay... okay...

.......

TUCK RULE TUCK RULE

....

what are the seahawks doing lol

they're still reviewing it dipshits

uh um okay YEAH BOYYY LET'S GOOOO SEAHAWKS WINNNNNN!!!!!

WRITING IN RUSSELL WILSON HOLY SHIT

STILL HYPE!! TWO FUCKING FOURTH DOWNS WHAT AN INSANE DRIVE. UNBELIEVABLE.

unbelievable.

...uh.

still fire pete.

Future-Proofing the Los Angeles Lakers, Pt. 2

Okay so Pt. 1 was actually this article I wrote in June 2016, when the Lakers roster was a little different. Most of what I said turned out to be fairly accurate: we drafted Ingram, Simmons never learned to shoot, we signed Luol Deng (fun fact: we're paying him 5M/y for the next two years), and we certainly did not contend. Then LeBron came over a few years later, our roster got blown up and started from scratch (with the exception of KCP and unfortunately Kyle Kuzma). So where do we stand now? (As I write this, we are 2-0 in the Finals, and I'm just assuming we're gonna sweep. Because how could we not?)

PG: Quinn Cook, Alex Caruso, Rajon Rondo

These guys are on contract for roughly one year each (Rondo has an option) and while none of them are incredible, Caruso is somehow a good defensive player and not just a meme, and Rondo has somehow learned to shoot. This isn't a position we can easily reload in unless Lillard or Steph cares to come over. Role players like Caruso and Rondo are fine here. I genuinely have nothing to say about Cook.

SG: Danny Green, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Avery Bradley, Talen Horton-Tucker, (Dion Waiters, J.R. Smith)

Okay I forgot to explain this but the parentheses obviously refer to people whose contracts are expiring after this year. Danny Green looked like a great option for us but instead is a $15 million albatross. Fortunately he's also expiring after next year, so we might be able to ship him out and bring someone better in. Meanwhile Pope is pretty good (and much cheaper) and Bradley is theoretically valuable and cheaper still. I don't know about the others. Wasn't Dion Waiters supposed to be good once upon a time? J.R. was not.

SF: LeBron James, (Jared Dudley)

Lmfao who needs SFs? Anyway LeBron's going to play here for the next... years, hopefully with a gradually diminishing performance (starting in about 5 years) rather than an abrupt retirement next year or something. I guess depth would be good here.

PF: Anthony Davis, Kyle Kuzma, (Markieff Morris)

Davis is opting out but almost surely will opt in if we win. How could you not? It's LeBron. Kuzma we should really trade. That dude is a mess. Fortunately his contract is really easy to drop. Maybe we can package him with Green. I'm also definitely down to keep Morris, probably for pretty cheap.

C :JaVale McGee, (Dwight Howard)

Never thought I'd say this (again) but I really hope we bring Dwight back. What a weird career path -- my dude got drafted 1st overall out of high school, won three straight DPOYs, was the centerpiece of a Finals team in '09, bought a ticket to the GOAT franchise, blew it, peaced out, did god only knows what for the last few years, and then returned to the GOAT franchise as a very good, high-effort role player. I have no idea where this Dwight came from. He's so scrappy and tough now and he tries hard, has a great motor, and is causing no problems with the team. Let's keep him.

Roster Update:

So, where does that leave us -- assuming we ship out Green and Kuzma and keep Howard and Davis? Roughly here:

PG: Rajon Rondo, Alex Caruso, Quinn Cook
SG: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Avery Bradley, Talen Horton-Tucker
SF: LeBron James
PF: Anthony Davis, Markieff Morris
C: Dwight Howard

Available money: roughly (very roughly; I'm not committed enough to this to figure out exactly how much) $10M below the cap. I don't know how the cap works, but I'll assume we can't finagle another max-type player and look at a few trades and free agents.

Trades:

All of these trades are 100% realistic and worked out with the NBA Trade Machine.

Lakers get Lou Williams, Ivica Zubac
Clippers get Danny Green, Kyle Kuzma

Lmfao. Contracts work. Clippers seem like they're exploding. We can throw a few picks in there. Williams is about 90.

Lakers get Nikola Jokic
Nuggets get J.R. Smith, Danny Green, Kyle Kuzma

WHO SAYS NO? Nuggets got wrecked pretty hard in the WCF. Presumably they're exploding the core and rebuilding.

Lakers get Joel Embiid
Sixers get J.R. Smith, Danny Green, Kyle Kuzma

The Philadelphia Experiment is clearly over. Embiid can have a good home in LA. For the future.

Lakers get Giannis Antetokounmpo, and his brother I'm not typing this again
Bucks get J.R. Smith and Danny Green. And maybe a pick

Look. I'm not trying to be rude. But the Bucks are a Regular Season Team and if they ever want to win anything they're going to have to ship out the dead weight and build around their young core: Eric Bledsoe, Khris Middleton, and Kyle Korver. Also they have a player named Sterling Brown and I thought it was Shannon Brown because it's abbreviated S. Brown and I'm sad now. Also. The Lakers must have all of the Antetokounmpos. It's the only way.

Lakers get Damian Lillard, Jusuf Nurkic, and a 1st
Blazers get J.R. Smith, Danny Green, Alex Caruso, and Kyle Kuzma

Who are we kidding? Portland is going nowhere. It's considered an Anarchist Commune by the feds and hasn't been to a finals since before I was born. It's owned by a dead guy. This team is donezo, as in stick a fork in 'em. Giving up Caruso is a blow, but Lillard should fill his shoes okay, and Nurkic is technically a basketball player. I just don't see another option for the Blazers, other than languishing in perpetual mediocrity for ever and ever until the end of time.

Lakers get Trae Young
Hawks get Quinn Cook, Kyle Kuzma, and Markieff Morris

I just wanted Trae Young.

And finally, here's a multi-team trade for you, as balanced as I could get it:

Lakers get Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, and Trae Young
Bucks get J.R. Smith and Danny Green
Mavs get Kyle Kuzma and probably a pick (from the Bucks)
Hawks get Markieff Morris

So assuming we pull that off, we get to start Young/Doncic/LeBron/Giannis/Davis and that's a pretty good lineup.

Barring that, though, let's look at our free agents.

Free Agents

Maybe Andre Drummond takes a vet min? No, but seriously, this is a serious section. Here is my serious note: I do not watch basketball, or rather didn't for the last few years. I don't know how good anyone is. But maybe we can get VINCE CARTER who is a FREE AGENT and last time I watched basketball he and Tracy McGrady were tearing up Toronto so we should for sure get him. Carmelo Anthony, big showing in the '08 Olympics. Maybe Tyson Chandler. Gary Payton (wait, it's Gary Payton II). David Nwaba is a free agent. Joakim Noah? He used to be good. Maybe Tyler Zeller? Oh we have to get Michael Beasley (who holy shit is only 31 somehow). Mike D'Antoni is a free agent, let's pick him up. Kostas Antetokounmpo obviously we gotta keep for Exodia. Is Devin Ebanks still around? Let's bring him in for a trial. And this guy I don't know but with the unmissable basketball name of Quinndary Weatherspoon. I mean COME ON.

Final Roster: (tumbleweeds)

The Wine Cellar Team

Welcome back and we're going right into it.

A while back I made this post, in which I explain what a Wine Cellar team is and some of the problems with the one Bill Simmons puts forward in his Book of Basketball. My team is much better, and not just because a lot of good seasons have happened since 2009. Although for the record a lot of good seasons have happened since 2009. Here's the Wine Cellar team, in the order I think of it.

Starting PG: 2016 Steph Curry

I mentioned this in the previous post, but three-point shooting is the great basketball revolution of this millennium and Steph Curry is its prophet. You cannot pretend to make a serious Wine Cellar team without Curry on it; his skillset is too valuable, too unique. 400 made threes at 45.4% is one of the great achievements in basketball history and you're not getting it from anyone else.

Starting SG: 2003 Kobe Bryant

Okay, here we go. Jordan is not on this team. There are many reasons for this, including his terrible three-point shooting (it's much worse than you might think because he benefited from a temporarily shortened line in the 90s), his being an asshole (he punched Steve Kerr in the face), his inability to play on a team with anyone better than him (he only succeeded on the Bulls because Pippen had such a huge dick he was willing to let Jordan pretend to be the best player on the team although in fact he was THIRD), and the fact that I hate him. Kobe's much better from three. James Harden might be better still (although not as much as you think -- Harden's best 3pt shooting season by volume was in 2019, when he made the second-most threes of all time but shot only 36.8%, which is actually WORSE than Kobe's 38.3% in '03, although on 3x the volume), but his atrocious defense compared with Kobe's elite defense makes the difference here. Kobe is also great at playing with other star teammates, which will be helpful on this team.

Starting SF: 2013 LeBron James

You really can't go wrong with LeBron, but 2013 is about the best he's ever looked. LeBron vs. Bird used to be a interesting conversation but that stopped around 10 years ago. Bird's still an all-time great and a player I personally love despite his affiliation, and I'd bet good money he makes it on this team somewhere, but LeBron is starting.

Starting PF: 1992 Dennis Rodman

If you think this is a weird pick at all, take a couple hours and go read this. Rodman is the most valuable player in NBA history (and has the most thorough statistical case for why he's great of any athlete I've ever seen). '92 gives us a nice combination of his rebounding dominance (it's his first of seven consecutive seasons leading the league in rebounds, his first of 7 at 14.9 RPG or higher, and his second of eight leading the league in TRB%) and defense (hard to quantify but his DWS is at an all-time high here).

Starting C: 2000 Shaq

For years I argued this should go to Hakeem, but ultimately this is a team of mismatches and there's never been a bigger mismatch than STEPH. But Shaq is second.

Now for the unpopular picks.

Sixth Man: 2014 Kevin Durant

Whatever. I can't find someone better for what I'm looking for here: a guy to come off the bench and score a bunch of points in a bunch of ways at some position 2-4. Again, there's no substitute for shooting, and Durant's really good at it. I also considered '03 TMac and I guess Giannis.

Bench PG: 1996 Gary Payton

We're running 2.2 units: a starting unit, a 6th man, and a 5-man bench unit that plays as a group. Our units are constructed to be complements to each other, so that if need be (e.g. we're getting destroyed by Allen Iverson and Kobe is busy guarding James Harden or something), we can sub in our backup PG, who just so happens to be the best defensive guard in history. Additionally our 5-man bench unit will play well and be balanced as a whole. Anyway, Payton is a god-tier defender, if only competent on the offensive end. This is the year, if you're wondering, that he guarded Jordan in the Finals and held him to under 40% shooting in the last four games of the series.

Bench SG: 2019 James Harden

Okay, so I just explained why Harden's three-point shooting is a little overrated, and yes, I hate him. But there's just not a substitute for a guy who makes 378 threes in a season, scoring 36.1 PPG. (I mean there is, and it's Steph, but we've already got him.) We need an offensive creator to pair with Payton and Harden is -- and I'm choking back vomit here -- good for that.

Bench SF: 1986 Larry Bird

A player of dubious athleticism, who took threes before they were cool (or meaningful) and made a really high percentage of them at really low volume, one of the most competitive players in history without being a gigantic asshole (cough cough Jordan). I really like Bird. I think he's a phenomenal passer, a proven shooter, and a great teammate. I genuinely considered including him in the starting team, which is saying a lot because, again, he played in 1986. And for the Celtics.

Bench PF: 2004 Kevin Garnett

Yeah I'm the asshole who thinks Garnett was better than Duncan. Guess who my coach is? Not Popovich. I love Garnett's fire, I love his passing, I love his defense. If you're the kind of person who likes jacking off to advanced stats, Garnett has the better advanced stats across the board. I don't know what to tell you, man. Garnett's just better. Duncan's reputation got inflated in a big way by winning five rings, but he was never actually as good as he looked.

Bench C: 1990 Hakeem Olajuwon

Honestly I'm just taking a wild swing at the year. I'm pretty sure Hakeem was being a god for pretty much the first 12 years of his career. You might want '94 for the awards but he was just better in '90. Anyway, Hakeem was the best post player ever and an astonishingly versatile defensive player. Center is really a gimme in these kinds of exercises, though. Anyone except like Bill Russell or Walton would be fine here.

12th Man: 1996 Scottie Pippen

Pippen is much better than a 12th man, but he's not quite good enough to start in either unit and so he finds a place here. We don't have a real lockdown defender at the 3 (and Kobe at the 2 might be more focused on offense at times) so Pippen fills that need for us. But I don't expect him to see a lot of minutes. It's a shame, because he's one of the overall best and most versatile players in NBA history.

Coach: 2010 Phil Jackson

Do not say Greg Popovich's name to me right now. Pop is a great coach, and his five rings aren't decorative, but Phil has ELEVEN. He is TWO POINT TWO times more accomplished than Pop. The only guy who's close is Red Auerbach, who coached 15 Hall of Famers -- 15! I counted them! -- and still only won nine rings. No one else has more than five. Phil Jackson is both the most accomplished coach in history (possibly in any sport, certainly in any good sport) and the only remotely reasonable coach for this team. He was legendarily good at getting big egos to coexist, whereas Pop forced Rodman out because he didn't get along with the uber-Christian David Robinson (of course Rodman immediately joined Phil's Bulls and won three rings). I could hire Jackson's former player Steve Kerr as an assistant coach to run the offense, but Phil's basketball mind is so far above mine (and any mortal's, i.e. everyone's but Kobe's) that I'm just gonna let him pick out the rest of the coaching staff. I'm sure he'll take Tex Winter though, and deservedly so. (For what it's worth, my Small Basketball Mind is telling me that the Triangle might actually work really well with these personnel -- Kobe, LeBron, and Shaq, with Steph and Rodman off doing whatever the off guys do in the Triangle, which seems like a good fit for them. On the bench we get Harden, Bird, Hakeem or Garnett, and it should work too, but not quite as well.)

Notable Exclusions:

- Jordan is the obvious one, but I talked about him in the Kobe blurb. I just don't need him, and frankly I don't want him. If anything's going to bring this team down, it's a lack of chemistry, and while Jackson can do a lot, I'm not going to throw the powderkeg of Jordan into this clockwork.

- Magic is still, to me, the greatest point guard of all time, but no one is good enough to displace the value of Curry on the starting team, and we'd really like to have a great defensive guard on the bench, so Magic gets left out.

- Part of me really (really really) wanted to include '07 Steve Nash -- he's one of my favorite players ever, maybe the most all-around offensively gifted point guard ever, and incredibly fun to watch -- but I couldn't justify it. He's not good enough at shooting to displace Curry (he's phenomenal, but low-volume and with nowhere near the kind of gravity), and while he's the second-best passer to ever play point (after Magic, not Stockton), that's not enough to knock Curry off either. And again, we like having an elite defender at our bench point guard.

- As I mentioned, I was close to including either Giannis or McGrady as my sixth man, but Durant just does what I want a little better. But I was close on '03 McGrady.

- Big men are always hard -- Duncan, Kareem, and even Wilt are always considerations. But the four I chose were never in any real jeopardy of being left out.

- I love Scottie Pippen but we have four SFs on this roster. He's not better than LeBron or Bird and he doesn't quite bring to the table what Durant and Bowen do at their respective specialties. On a team of all-around players he'd be the backup SF, for what it's worth. Actually you know what I just decided to put him in over Bowen.

Lineups:

The full roster, to reiterate, is

PG: '16 Curry, '96 Payton

SG: '03 Kobe, '19 Harden

SF: '13 LeBron, '86 Bird, '14 Durant, '96 Pippen

PF: '92 Rodman, '04 Garnett

C: '00 Shaq, '90 Hakeem

So what kinds of lineups can we make? Well, aside from the obvious starting 5 + bench 5, we can make

The God Shooting Lineup: Curry, Harden, Durant, Bird, Shaq

The God Defensive Lineup: Payton, Kobe, Pippen, Rodman, Hakeem

The God Smallball Lineup: Curry, Harden, Kobe, LeBron, Rodman

The God Bigball Lineup: LeBron, Durant, Bird, Garnett, Shaq

The God Old Guy Lineup: Payton, Pippen, Bird, Rodman, Hakeem (avg '92)

The God Young Guy Lineup: Curry, Harden, Durant, LeBron, Garnett (avg '13.2)

FAQ:

Q. Why are they all so young? You have only five players from before 2000, and four in the last 10 years alone.

A. Honestly the difference is shooting. You can see that the young guys are largely the guards/wingmen (avg. 2006), and the older guys are largely big men (avg. 1996), because the latter have skillsets that hold up better in the modern game. I'd love to be able to include guys like West, Cousy, and Baylor, but the fact is their inability to shoot threes (and in Cousy's case, lack of athleticism) hamstrings them in comparison to modern players. This is also the single biggest reason Jordan is unplayable on this team. If you take out the three years with a shortened line, he shot 28.8% from three, a full 10 percentage points below Kobe's '03 shooting.

Q. You don't have Jordan.

A. Yeah. And my team is better for it.

Q. Why don't you have Jordan?

A. I've answered this question repeatedly, but in summary: I think he's overrated, he's bad at shooting threes, he's a bad teammate, he's overly competitive, he's not actually all that valuable (wait on my Jordan article I swear it's gonna kick your ass), the points he scores are heavily duplicable, and I don't think he's good enough at defense to merit a spot. Nor do I think he's uniquely valuable to a winning team like Simmons seemed to,

Q. What's your problem with Jordan?

A. I'm writing a whole article on this. It'll come out eventually. Chill.

Q. Is Harden really good enough to deserve a spot on this team?

A. Honestly, I don't know. I didn't watch 2019 so I don't have an intuitive judgment, but it seems to me that he's doing pretty much exactly what I want from a backup 2, which is be the primary scorer from the outside and create for his teammates. If it's not Harden I'll probably make it Michael Cooper and play Steve Nash at the 1, which might be a better team (and certainly more fun) but loses the relative advantage of Payton's defense over Cooper's and the huge advantage of Harden's high-volume distance shooting over Nash's.

Q. Where is (my favorite player)?

A. They didn't make the cut because they're terrible. But really, this team is built around a specific image and a couple outstanding players. The only guys on this team I absolutely would not substitute are Curry, LeBron, and Rodman. Yes, I would even bench (or cut!) Kobe if given a sufficiently convincing reason.

Q. If Garnett is so good why does Duncan have five championships and Garnett only one?

A. Because Duncan was handed one of the best situations of any rookie in history and capitalized effectively, whereas Garnett was handed a terrible one and then mistakenly chose to go to Boston over LA. So he has bad judgment. Nobody's perfect.

Q. How have you overcome Simmons's mistakes?

A. Excellent question. First off, we've annihilated all bias: we are drawing only two players from the Lakers, Kobe and Shaq, although several more (Payton, LeBron, Rodman, and hopefully one day Curry) eventually played for the team. Meanwhile the Celtics are well-represented with Bird and the future Garnett (can you blame me? the Celtics suck). Second, I stick to his "formula" much more closely: unselfishness + character + defense (!) + rebounding (!!) + MJ (lol). Notably, unlike Simmons, we have some defensive specialists: Payton, Pippen, and Rodman. Third, I am stronger at literally every position.

Here's a comparison:

PG: '16 Curry, '96 Payton ||| '85 Magic, '09 Chris Paul

SG: '03 Kobe, '19 Harden ||| '92 Jordan, '09 Wade, '01 Allen

SF: '13 LeBron, '86 Bird, '14 Durant, '96 Pippen ||| '86 Bird, '92 Pippen, '09 LeBron

PF: '92 Rodman, '04 Garnett ||| '03 Duncan, '86 McHale (lmfao)

C: '00 Shaq, '90 Hakeem ||| '77 Kareem, '77 Walton (lmfaoooo)

Notice a few things. First, there is very little overlap here -- it's Bird (the only player we took from the same year), Pippen, LeBron, and that's it. Second, Simmons has NO shooters anywhere close to mine -- the best shooters on his roster are Paul, Wade, Allen, Bird, and LeBron, none of whom come close to Curry, Harden, LeBron, or Bird. Third, despite my heavy use of current players, note how I don't have three guys from 2020 specifically just because that's the most recent year. That's because I'm not a hack.

Finally, I didn't take Jordan.

(In all honesty, I think Simmons's team is fine, except for the weird vintages, the glaringly wrong McHale/Walton picks, the Kobe omission, and the lack of shooting. I just think mine's a lot better, largely because we fixed those mistakes and benefit from a few phenomenal seasons.)

Q. How many balls are there?

A. Just one. And that's why we only have so many guys who need the ball to survive: Kobe, LeBron, and Harden. Everyone else will be fine working off-the-ball.

Q. Where's Wilt?

Ahh. Yeah. So I literally wrote the article (9 years ago, hot damn) on why Wilt is special, and I stand by that. So why do I have Shaq and Hakeem above him? There are three main reasons: he's risky, he's early, and he's a center. First, we don't know how Wilt would do today, and although I think he'd do fine, there's no reason to risk it when we have the much more modern Shaq and Hakeem, who we KNOW would dominate. Second, while Wilt was an incredible player in the '60s and '70s, the position has evolved a lot since then (for instance, Hakeem's innovations in the post can still be seen in the footwork of current players like LeBron, who learned from Kobe, who learned from Hakeem). Wilt would be behind the curve technically, even if he would still dominate physically. And finally, because Wilt is a center (the most deeply talented position), it's not hard to replace him with any number of all-time-great centers. Sure, Wilt might be the greatest, but he's not that much better than Shaq. Whereas there's no replacing guys like LeBron or Steph.

Q. Where's Russell?

Trash heap.

Q. Where's Klay?

Exactly one spot behind Harden. Yes, that's right, Jordan was not in my top three considerations at SG. Klay is, if not a better shooter than Harden, a very close one, and would fit better than Harden into the starting lineup. But ultimately I want Harden to be the primary scorer and creator on the bench unit and Klay is just not cut out for that role.

Q. Where's Magic?

A. I don't know. My heart hurts. I love Magic. But I need an elite defensive guard, right? And there's no counterfeiting Payton.

Q. Where's Karl Malone/Charles Barkley/Dwyane Wade/Chris Paul/Clyde Drexler/...

A. I genuinely think these players are outclassed by the guys I have.

Q. But Phil benefited from so many great players.

A. So did every coach who's ever won a title (except, astonishingly, Larry Brown). And Phil turned his talent into twice as many rings as any other modern coach. I don't know what you're not getting here. It's like if there were a player who averaged 50 points per game and he lost his spot to the guy who averaged 25.

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