Yes, Scotty deserves a higher ranking.  That is total BS.

Posted by John from Pittsburgh, PA (Wings fan for life!) on 07/29/09 at 12:25 PM ET

Herb Brooks at 50??
I would think he would have been much higher.

Posted by AvsRock from My timeshare in insanity... on 07/29/09 at 12:33 PM ET

Scotty Bowman should be highter than Phil Jackson, anyway.  And Don Shula.

And how is Knute Rockne not higher than Don Shula?

What a messed up list.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 07/29/09 at 01:29 PM ET

1. John Wooden, college basketball
2. Vince Lombardi, NFL
3. Bear Bryant, college football
4. Phil Jackson, NBA
5. Don Shula, NFL
6. Red Auerbach, NBA

Wooden cheated.

Bryant coached in a sport that votes its champion—enough said.

Jackson inherited every team he’s won with, save for this latest Laker squad.

Shula won 2 titles near the start of his coaching career, and fizzled out the rest of the way (at least when it comes to post-season success. And he had Dan Marino for crying out loud.

Auerbach is the only guy above Bowman that deserves to be in the same discussion as Scotty.

Posted by Nathan from the scoresheet! on 07/29/09 at 01:56 PM ET

I agree with everything Nathan said, but wanted to take this a bit further:

Jackson inherited every team he’s won with, save for this latest Laker squad.

Furthermore, he won his first few rings with the best player ever to play the game.  You don’t see many people raving about Sather’s coaching any more- so why would you do so with Jackson?  He’s a great lockerroom chemistry guy but he’s won championships with the best player in NBA history, and easily the most driven player of his era.  The Lakers era championships… Well.  In a league with no other dominant big men, Shaq was going to win 2-3.  He should’ve won more, but Jackson failed to motivate him. 

This year’s Laker’s team was good, but far from as good as most recent championship teams despite having one of the top 3 players in the league as well as a second who is one of the top 10.  Jackson?  No thanks.  And, lest the point be missed, the NBA is a sport where a two man team with merely adequate roleplayers can win.  It’s not like hockey or the NFL, by any means. 

Bowman had great players, solid teams, but he beat teams with an equivalent level of talent.  Jackson never did.

Posted by shanetx on 07/29/09 at 02:34 PM ET

If you are going to take credit away from Phil Jackson, you better as hell take all the credit away from Auerbach.  People don’t seem to remember that Auerbach had whole lineups of Hall-of-Famers, competing against much inferior teams (Pettit and the Hawks, Chamberlain and 76ers/warriors, later West and Chamberlain lakers).  Auerbach deserves credit as a general manager for assembling that talent, but in terms of coaching, he was no better than Phil.

Posted by wilford brimley on 07/29/09 at 04:06 PM ET

I’m not sure who’s the best coach ever but I do know that Red Aubach is the most over-rated coach EVER. Let alone ahead of Scotty Bowman.
He never coached a championship team without Bill Russell. In fact he coached six seasons before the Celtics drafted Russell and didn’t reach the finals. He coached Russell for 10 seasons and won 9 NBA titles, reaching the finals 10 straight seasons. There you have it,16 total seasons ,6 without Russell = nothing,10 with Russell =dynasty.
And to prove the point further ,when Aubach retired the Celtics won 2 more titles in the next 3 seasons without a head coach. Bill Russell was listed as a player/coach.
The Celtics were so good because of Russell -PERIOD.They won without a coach with him. But they couldn’t win with a coach without him. It didn’t matter, coach or not. The only thing that mattered was Russell.
Aubach was/is definitly over-rated. And as far as I’m concerned well below Scotty Bowman. Bowman took muliple NHL teams to the S.C. Finals and won.

The NHL is always overlooked in these polls. In ‘97 they (ESPN) had Gretzky rated 5th greatest athlete of all time. A great honor to be sure. But any thoughtful and objective analysis has to put him at the very least in the top 3. Their parameters were how an idividual stacked up (statisticlly speaking) versus his contemporaries as compared to other athletes.  Well, the only 2 other athletes who dominted their sport to the extant that Gretzky dominted hockey in the 80’s were Babe Ruth & Wilt Chamberlain ( who got jobbed too).

Posted by Lindas1st on 07/29/09 at 04:38 PM ET

Should be Lombardi and Bowman tied for #1.  I would play my ass off for either one of those guys no matter how intense they get.  All they want to do is win.

Posted by SYF from a "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" on 07/29/09 at 05:02 PM ET

Not to pick on Scotty, he’s a great coach, but all of the criticisms you folks are applying to the guys ahead of him can be applied to him as well. Inherited great players? Yep. The Habs had won five Stanley Cups in seven years before he came along, and the Pens won the title the year before. Had a slew of Hall of Famers on his teams? Check.

Auerbach Celtics didn’t play weak teams. Chamberlain’s Warriors and Sixers were excellent. The West/Baylor Lakers were excellent. Many of those Finals were very close, several coming down to the last play. It was a very stacked, eight and nine-team league, which had expanded to 17 a decade after Auerbach retired as coach without an appreciable drop in quality.

I’m not a fan of the Zen Master, but it wasn’t a lock that Jordan’s Bulls would have won a title. If you saw the way Michael played in the late ‘80s when he was putting up his most dominant numbers, those teams didn’t look like they would ever get over the hump. Those Bulls teams won without a true point guard and chopped liver at center, with role players who hadn’t won anywhere else and Jackson definitely deserves some credit for that. The Shaq titles are less impressive, but he did keep Shaq and Kobe from killing each other.

All of the coaches in the Top Ten had incredibly talented teams and arguably, most of them had more of a hand in assembling that talent than Scotty did. Certainly the reputation of college coaches are a large factor in drawing talented athletes. Auerbach built those Celtic teams (and the great Celtic teams of the ‘80s, in fact) while Scotty had probably the best general manager in history in Sam Pollack. When he was given the GM chair in Buffalo, he didn’t win anything, despite also taking over the coaching reins three times.

This isn’t to compare Scotty to Red or Scotty to Phil, since there is no reasonable way of doing that anyway. All of them had very talented teams. All of were good enough at managing that talent enough to keep doing it year after year, but I think with 90% of the coaches on this list, I think the success was talent first, coaching second.

Posted by Snap Wilson on 07/29/09 at 05:36 PM ET

For the fact that I don’t consider Don Shula the second-best NFL coach ever, I’d have to put Bowman in front of him.  For the fact that I think Bowman is better at managing his talent than Phil Jackson, I’d put him behind Bowman as well.

I can’t speak to any of the rest of them having neither seen them coach.

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 07/29/09 at 06:22 PM ET

Behind every great head coaching career, there are a few great players. As for Scotty, he probably deserves 5 as Shula and Bryant are a bit high.

Posted by UMFan from Colorado on 07/29/09 at 11:34 PM ET