The Great Coaches

[SWC75]

I heard a reporter on Greg Popovich, head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, talking about what a great coach he was with his 4 NBA titles and how he’s a bit of a grouch at press conferences but not a bad guy if you get to know him. It reminded me of Bill Belichick and I wondered how their records compared. Popovich has 4 titles, Belichick 3 but I wasn’t satisfied with that. I wanted to give them credit for getting close to a title, as well. (Belichick certainly deserves credit for the 18-0 run to the Super Bowl in 2007). I decided on a point system: 5 points for winning the championship, 2 for making it to the title game or series, (I’m equating a post season game in the NFL with a post season series in the other sports) and 1 point for making it to a conference championship. They aren’t additive: you get 0, 1, 2 or 5 points. I wanted to count only those seasons where they won at least a playoff game or series and Belichick’s teams had years where they only had to win two games to get to the Super Bowl. I didn’t want them to get credit for getting a bye and then losing. So I’m only counting season where they got as far as a conference title game.

Belichick coached the Cleveland Browns from 1991-1995. They made the playoffs only in 1994. The won the Wild Card Game, ironically over the Patriots, then lost the “Divisional” game, (Not sure why it’s called that but it’s the quarterfinal game, the one just before the conference championship) to the Steelers. He became the Patriots coach in 2000. He went 5-11 and missed the playoffs his first season. He won the Super Bowl, (5 points) in 2001, 2003, (5 points) and 2004 (5 points). They lost the Divisional game to the Broncos in 2005 and the AFC championship to the Colts in 2006, (1 point). They got 2 points for the 18-1 season in 2007. They didn’t win another playoff game until 2011 when they again lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl, (2 points). Last year they lost to the Ravens in the AFG title game, (1 point). 5 + 5 + 5 + 1 + 2 + 2 +1 = 21 points.

(It’s kind of ironic that the Patriots are still perceived as the reigning dynasty in the NFL but every other Boston area major league team, (the Red Sox, the Celtics and the Bruins) have won their sport’s title since the Patriots last one it yet nobody looks at those franchises as a current dynasty.)

Popovich became the Spurs coach for the 1996-97 season. He went 20-62 and missed the playoffs his first season, then lost in the quarterfinals, (the conference semi-finals), the next year. He won the NBA title for the first time in 1999, (5 points). He lost in the first round the next year and in the conference finals (1 point) in 2001. The lost in the quarters the next year, then won another NBA title in 2003, (5 points). Then he did the same the next two years, winning the 2005 NBA title, (5 points), and the two years after that, winning the 2007 title (5 points). He lost to the Lakers in the western finals in 2008 (1 point), They lost in the first round the next year and the quarters in 2010. They lost in the first round in 2011 but made it to conference finals in 2012 (1 point). They are presently in the NBA Finals, (2 points), with a chance to push it to 5 points. At present: 5 + 1 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 25 points, with a chance to go to 28. So Popovich’s record is slightly better than Belichick’s at this point in their careers. (Since I wrote this the heat have beaten the Spurs so Popovich remains at 25 points.) Belechick has been a head coach one more year than Popovich, (18 years vs. 17). If you divide the points by those years, you get 1.47 for Popovich and 1.17 for Belichick.

Naturally, I wondered how this compared to other coaches. At first I was going to go back to the Pro Football merger in 1970, from which point every sport had a conference championship. But I hated leaving out the great coaches from before that and wanted to include them. So I decided that in leagues where there was just a single championship game or series, I’d give one point to the second place team in each conference. Where there was a rival league, such as the AFL, I’ll give five points to the champions of the more established league, 2 to the team they defeated in the final, 2 to the champion of the newer league and one to the team they defeated in their final. For years where there was no title game, such as the NFL prior to 1933, I gave 5-2-1-1- to the top four teams in the standings. If there was a tie, both teams would get the same points: they wouldn’t split them. For baseball in 1904, when John McGraw refused to play the American league team, I’ll give McGraw 5 points as the National league was the established league and as they had a better winning percentage than the American League champion Red Sox. In 1994, when there was no post-season, I gave 5 to the team with the best record in baseball, 2 to the team with the best record in the other league and one each to the teams with the second best record in the other league. (When I say I’m giving points to the team, I mean giving it to their coach). Finally, if a team had more than one coach, the points go to their last coach of that season, unless the first coach was not fired but just unable to coach due to illness or military service, in which case I gave the same credit to both coaches. But the coach did have to coach the team at some point in that season.

Basketball is kind of a special case. The first successful league was the National Basketball League, which was founded in 1937. The Basketball Association of America was founded in 1946 and had the bigger markets and arenas so the top NBL teams jumped to it. The new league had swallowed the old one, not the other way around. I treated the NBL as the established league until 1948-49 when the Lakers, Royals and Pistons moved over to the BAA which was later re-named the NBA. For that season the BAA champ got 5 points and the runner-up 2 points while the NBL champ got 2 points and the runner-up 1 point.

By that scoring system, here are the coaches/managers in the history of major league professional sports who, like Popovich and Belichick, have accumulated at least 20 points. I’ll rank them by total points but I’ll also note the number of years they coached/managed and their average points per year, (which I’ll use as a tie breaker: if they are still tied, I’ll list them alphabetically). Also, Basketball and Hockey years are identified by the year the season ended while football is identified by the year the season began):

Phil Jackson, basketball 60 points in 20 years, (3.00 points per season)
Championships: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009, 2010 (11)
Runner-up: 2004, 2008 (2)
Semis: 1990 (1)
For some reason a lot of people downgrade Phil. Yeah, he had talented teams with great players. But those players were already there and not winning championships until Phil showed up. And he won more championships that any other coach in any sport. The other guys on this list had talented teams and superstars of their own. They also got to pick their spots once they had made their reputations, just as Phil has.

Scotty Bowman, hockey 56 points in 30 years, (1.87)
Championships: 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1992, 1997, 1998, 2002 (9)
Runner-up: 1968, 1969, 1970, 1995 (4)
Semis: 1975, 1980, 1996 (3)
The amazing thing about Bowman is the number of places he’s had success. Most famous coaches have one place where they really made their reputation. A few, like Phil Jackson, had great success in two places. Bowman made the NHL finals the first three years of his career in St. Louis, although he benefited from the NHL’s unusual move of making an entire division of expansion teams. He then won five Stanley Cups, including four in a row in Montreal, also making it to the conference finals in another year. He also made it to the conference finals in Buffalo. He won another Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh and three more in Detroit, also being and runner up and making it to the conference finals in two other seasons there. That’s five different cities in which he earned points under my system and three cities in which he earned championships. No one can match that.

Red Auerbach, basketball 53 points in 20 seasons (2.65)
Championships: 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966 (9)
Runner-up: 1949, 1958 (2)
Semis: 1947, 1953, 1954, 1955 (4)
Auerbach was a good coach noted mostly for offense before he got Bill Russell. He had the smarts to build his team around defense and fast breaks with Russell. They used that style to beat all the NBA teams that just fed the ball the ball to their stars in the half-court offense. Every really successful NBA team since has played in at least a somewhat similar fashion to the Celtics. But Auerbach never won or even played for a title until Bill Russell was his center.

George Halas, football 53 points in 40 years, (1.33)
Championships: 1921, 1933, 1940, 1941, 1946, 1963 (6)
Runner-up: 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1934, 1937, 1942 (8)
2nd in Division from 1933: 1936, 1939, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1954, 1955, 1958 (9)
3rd-4th prior to 1933: 1927
Halas, like Connie Mack, had the advantage of owning the team. He didn’t fire himself, even in circumstances where a coach who didn’t own the team might have been let go. But he did take some years off. He didn’t coach the Bears in 1930-32, 1943-45 and 1956-57. He actually loses some serious points for that: the Bears won NFL titles in 1932 and 1943, played for the title in 1956 and finished second in the Western Division in 1944. If you add those 13 points onto Halas’s total, he’d be at the top of the list. But, like Mack he coached forever, so his average points per game is much lower. He’s also one up on Belichick in having undefeated teams lose NFL championship games: it happened to Halas twice, in 1934 and 1942, although George wasn’t at the latter game, having entered the Navy. Halas also loses points under my system for the period the All-America Conference was in business, (1946-49). His second place finishes in 1947-49 don’t get him points because he wasn’t one of the “Final Four” of his sport: I only gave points to the teams that played in the championship games of the two leagues. Despite all of this, he still winds up fourth on the list. He only had losing records in 1929, 1952, 1953, 1960, 1964 and 1966, so he might have had a long tenure even if he didn’t own the team.

Toe Blake, hockey 46 points in 13 seasons (3.54)
Championships: 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1965, 1966, 1968 (8)
Runner-Up: 1967 (1)
Semis: 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 (4)
Blake coached the Canadiens at the very height of their power. His teams earned points every season of his tenure. His first five teams won the Stanley Cup. His average points per season even exceeds Phil Jackson’s , although he did it only with one team, not two different teams like Phil. Like Dick Irvin, below, he coached in the 6 team era when 2/3 of the league made the playoffs. But it hardly mattered: he coached the best teams in the best organization in his sport. You can question how much of his achievements should be attributed to the franchise and how much to him but he certainly deserves a big
chunk of the credit.

Joe McCarthy, baseball 46 points in 24 seasons (1.92)
Championships: 1932, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1943 (7)
Runner-Up: 1929, 1942 (2)
Second Place: 1930, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1948, 1949 (7)
McCarthy earned points with three different teams but all his championships occurred with the Yankees. Again the issue is: how much of it was him and how much was it the organization? But he must have been very good. Every player who played for both Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel seems to have regarded McCarthy as the better manager. But Stengel won his first pennant by winning the last two games of the season against McCarthy’s Red Sox in 1949.

Dick Irvin, hockey 46 points in 27 seasons (1.70)
Championships: 1932, 1944, 1946, 1953 (4)
Runner-Up: 1931, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1952, 1954, 1955 (10)
Second Place Finishes: 1934, 1945, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951 (6)
Irvin was the Scottie Bowman of his day, coaching the Black Hawks, the Maple Leafs and the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup Finals and winning four times with the latter two teams. He would have been rated even higher if he’s had better success in the Finals but lost 10 times in 14 appearances there. Again, it should be noted that he coached in the era when the NHL had only six teams and four of them made the playoffs.

Curly Lambeau, football 42 points in 33 seasons (1.27)
Championships: 1929, 1930, 1931, 1936, 1939, 1944 (6)
Runner-Up: 1927, 1932, 1938 (3)
Second Place, 1933 on: 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 (4)
3rd-4th prior to 1933: 1923, 1935 (2)
Quick now: What Green Bay Packers coach has won the most NFL championships. Clue #1: His name begins with an “L”. Clue #2: He once won three titles in a row. Clue #3: he coached the Redskins after he left Green Bay. The answer is Curley Lambeau. Unlike his great rival, George Halas, he didn’t own a piece of the team and he did get fired after a dispute over his using team funds to build a much-needed training facility. Losing seasons in his last two years there didn’t help, but he had only one loser before that. He had actually coached the Packers for two years before they joined the NFL, going 19-2-1, games that don’t even appear on his official NFL record, (which is 226-132-22).

Casey Stengel, baseball 42 points in 25 seasons (1.68)
Championships: 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1958 (7)
Runner-Up: 1955, 1957, 1960 (3)
Second Place: 1954 (1)
Stengel’s tenure with the Yankees is virtually identical to Toe Blake’s with the Canadiens, including championships in his first five years. The rest of Stengel’s career was all about keeping the press and the fans entertained so they could ignore how lousy his Dodgers, Braves and Mets teams were. His big hero was John McGraw, whom he played for. He wound up with exactly the same number of points, but in fewer seasons, because he won 7 of 10 World Series.

John McGraw, baseball 42 points in 33 seasons (1.27)
Championships: 1904, 1905, 1921, 1922 (4)
Runner-Up: 1911, 1912, 1913, 1917, 1923, 1924 (6)
Second place finishes: 1903, 1906, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1925, 1928, 1932 (10)
McGraw’s 1904 championship is, in part the result of his refusal to play the American League, (and defending World Series) champions Red Sox because of a feud with AL President Ban Johnson. He would rank higher but His teams lost 6 of the 9 World Series in which they played. Still, he earned points in 20 of 33 seasons.

Harry Wright, baseball 40 points in 23 seasons (1.74)
Championships: 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1877, 1878 (6)
Runner-Up: 1879, 1882, 1887 (3)
3rd-4th: 1871, 1876, 1883, 1885, 1886, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893 (11)
Wright is the earliest member of this group: the first famous manager/coach. He was of course a player/ manager, at least at the beginning: that’s all there was at the time. But his playing career ended after 1877 so he went on to become the first non-playing manager. His father was a famous cricket player and Wright began in that sport. He had been a member of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club of New York which had invented the game as we know it today and organized the first truly professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, which dominated baseball when it was nothing but touring teams in the 1860’s. (Their 1869 record was 65-0.) But his “points” only come after the formation of the National Association of Professional Baseball players in 1871, which created the first league schedule and gave birth to the National League in 1876. The Cincinnati Reds are not directly descended from the Red Stockings, since that team was disbanded. But the Boston Red Stockings, under Wright, picked up most of their players and dominated the National Association and the early years of the National League with them. For all that, Wright was probably less famous at the time than his younger brother George, who was a much greater player. Still, if you mentioned the “Wright Brothers” to anyone in the 19th century, they would assume you were talking about these guys. Note: the American Association was a major league from 1882-1891 so, under my system, Harry gets no credit for his 3-4 place finishes in those years.

Connie Mack, baseball 40 points in 53 seasons (0.76)
Championships: 1910, 1911, 1913, 1929, 1930 (5)
Runner-Up: 1902, 1905, 1914, 1931 (4)
2nd Place: 1903, 1907, 1909, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1932 (7)
Everybody knows that “Mr. Mack” managed the Phillies for 50 years but not many know he also managed the Pirates for three years in the 1890’s. He was part owner of the Phillies, which enabled him to remain manager through 16 last place finishes, including 7 in a row at one point. His A’s were like the modern Florida Marlins. He would build championship teams and then have to sell off his best players to stay in business and keep control of the team. But his 9 pennant winners were among the best teams ever and he had a winning record in the World Series. His 53 years as coach/ manager are easily the most of any coach in major league professional sports. He was still coaching the A’s in 1950 at age 87 before being persuaded to retire, reluctantly.

Pat Riley, basketball 37 points in 23 seasons (1.61)
Championships: 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988, 2006 (5)
Runner-Up: 1983, 1984, 1989, 1994 (4)
Semis: 1986,, 1993, 1997, 2005 (4)
You could win some bets about how many championships Riley won with the Lakers. That first title of the Magic Era in 1980 was won with Paul Westhead at the helm. Riley was doing radio commentary at the time. Riley would be higher on the list if he did to Eric Spoelstra what he did in 2006 to Stan Van Gundy: take over when he saw a chance to win a title. Perhaps stung by criticism over that, (especially from Mike Lupica who chose Riley to be one of his personal whipping boys), he didn’t do that when LeBron took his talents to South beach and so Spoelstra has picked up a dozen points that could have been Riley’s. Pat knows you need the players: He’s coached a 65-17 team and a 15-67 team.


Johnny Kundla, basketball 36 points in 12 seasons (3.00)
Championships: 1948, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954 (6)
Runner-Up: 1959 (1)
Semis: 1951, 1955, 1956, 1957 (4)
Kundla was the coach of basketball’s first dynasty. Like Red Auerbach, his success is tied to one great player, a center who dominated the game, in his case George Mikan who the centerpiece of all six of the championship teams he coached. And it is six, not five as almost all histories show. For some reason the NBL is absent from most histories of the game. But Kundla, and Mikan and the Lakers won the NBL title in 1948 when it was recognized as the dominant league over the fledging Basketball Association of America, which only got credibility when the Lakers, Pistons and Royals jumped from the NBA to the BAA the next year, followed by the Nats and Hawks, among others the season after that, when the BAA became the NBA. The 1948 Lakers also won the last World Professional Basketball Tournament, a sort of March Madness for both the top touring professional and league teams from 1939-48. They would have been heavy favorites to win a series from the BAA champions Baltimore Bullets. I have a DVD on the 1953-54 NBA season and the commentary, (recorded at the time), says repeatedly that the Lakers are going for their sixth championship, not their fifth. That means that the Lakers are actually tied with the Celtics for the most pro basketball championships with 17.

Paul Brown, football 33 points in 25 years (1.32)
Championships:, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1954, 1955 (7)
Runner-up: 1951, 1952, 1953, 1957 (4)
2nd place: 1958, 1959, 1960 (3)
Brown’s record is reduced in my system because his first four championships were in the All-American Conference and not the NFL, so he gets only 2 points apiece for them, not 5. Also he gets no credit for finishing 2nd in 1960, (which actually was probably his best team of the post Otto Graham Era), because the AFL had started up. I think the Browns may have been the best team in pro football from the time they started in 1946 until Graham retired in 1955. Everybody kind of began over again in the post war era, even the established teams of the NFL. The big key was: Did your head coach coach service ball? If he did, he knew all the best players. One such coach was Frank Leahy, who brought a bunch of them back to Notre Dame and went undefeated for four years. Another was Paul Brown who did the same thing for the Browns, who lost 4 games in four years and won every AAFC title, then played the two-time defending NFL champion Eagles in their first game in 1950 and crushed them, 35-10, (ironically the same score as the first Super Bowl). I think if they’d been an NFL expansion team those first four Brown teams might have gotten 5 points a year, not 2. We’ll never know.

Frank Selee, baseball 32 points in 16 seasons (2.00)
Championships: 1891, 1892, 1893, 1897, 1898 (5)
Runner-Up: 1899, 1904 (2)
3rd-4th place: 1894, 1896, 1900, 1903, 1905 (5)
In the 20th century a remarkable number of players who had played for the Baltimore Orioles of the National league in the 1890’s became prominent managers, especially John McGraw of the Giants, Wilbert Robinson of the Dodgers and Hughie Jennings of the Tigers. They regaled the press with so many stories of their old team they left the impression that the old Orioles were not only the best of the time, (and any time) but that they invented everything in the game. In fact, the Orioles won only three National League pennants in that decade while the Boston Beaneaters, (who had been Harry Wright’s Red Stockings: they were also known as the Doves, the Rustlers and the Bees, first becoming the Braves in 1912), won five pennants and actually invented many of the things the old Orioles gave themselves credit for. (The Orioles retain credit for grabbing baserunners by the belt and hiding balls in the abnormally high outfield grass in their home park so they didn’t have to run as far to obtain one.) Selee was the Beaneater’s manager and later became manager of the Cubs, putting together the team Frank Chance took over in 1906 that set a record with 116 wins and won 4 pennants and 2 World Series from 1906-1910. He doesn’t get credit for the 1903 and 1905 3-4 place teams as the American League had started up by then.

Ned Hanlon, baseball 30 points in 19 years (1.58)
Championships: 1894, 1895, 1896, 1899, 1900 (5)
Runner-Up: 1897, 1898 (2)
3rd-4th (1892-1900) or 2nd (1891 or 1901-1907): 1902 (1)
Hanlon was the coach of those Baltimore Orioles teams of the 1890’s and thus mentor to all those successful 20th century managers that that team produced. It’s true that he won only 3 pennants with the Orioles compared to Selee’s 5 with the Beaneaters. But the Orioles owners also bought the Brooklyn team and transferred Hanlon and many of his top players there. So Hanlon picked with 2 more pennants, (championships in those days because there was no American league yet), to finish tied with Selee in that regard. There’s really been no other era of baseball history like that. It was if the Yankees had another Yankees to have a rivalry with.

Cap Anson, baseball 30 points in 21 seasons (1.43)
Championships: 1880, 1881, 1882, 1885 (4)
Runner-up: 1875, 1886, (2)
3rd-4th, (1875-1881 and 1892-1898) or 2nd (1882-1891): 1879, 1883, 1888, 1890, 1891, 1895 (6)
Cap Anson, as Ken Burns described him in his “Baseball” documentary, was “The greatest player of his century”. He’s one of the few 19th century players who would probably be a star player today,. He was big, huge for his time at 6-0, 227, the first player to have 3000 hits, 821 of them extra-base hits in the dead ball era, (Mickey Mantle had 952 in the live ball era). They didn’t keep track of stolen bases until 1886 but he had 227 of them. But he might not have been too comfortable in the modern game, as he was the leading force behind banning blacks from baseball in 1884. He was a player-manager until his last season. The Cubs were originally the White Stockings but one year he had so many young players on his team that sportswriters began calling them “Anson’s Colts”, or “Anson’s Cubs”. The second name stuck. His point total is complicated. He gets a point for finishing 3rd or 4th when there was only the National league but his teams had to finish second to get a point when the American Association was a major league in 1882-91. Also, there was a sort of primordial World Series between the NL and the AA in 1884-1890. The fact that two of the series ended in ties illustrates that these were seen more as exhibitions rather than championships. Nonetheless, Anson’s teams were in one of the tied series in 1885 and lost the 1886 series. I’m considering the AA champion St. Louis Browns, (now the Cardinals) the “5” team for that season and giving Anson’s club 2 points. For the previous year, however, since the NL was the more established league and won four of these series compared to the one defeat and two ties, I’m giving Anson 5 points for that one.

Hap Day, hockey 29 points in 10 seasons (2.90)
Championships: 1942, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1949 (5)
Runner-up:
Semis: 1941, 1943, 1944, 1950 (4)
Day was the Toronto Maple Leafs coach during their greatest period and had the enviable record of going 5-0 in the Stanley Cup Finals. He’s also the first major league coach/manager to overcome a 0-3 deficit to win a best of seven series, beating Jack Adam’s Red Wings, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 4-3, 9-3, 3-0 and 3-1 in 1942 for the Cup.

Vince Lombardi, football 29 points in 10 seasons (2.90)
Championships: 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967 (5)
Runner-Up: 1960 (1)
Second Place (1959-66) or Semis (1967-69): 1963, 1964 (2)
Many coaches are described as “a Vince Lombardi type” or the Vince Lombardi of their sport”. This guy WAS Vince Lombardi. He mastered the technique of being rough and demanding of his players but also making sure they knew he cared about them and wanted them to be the best they could be. That engendered tremendous loyalty and reverence, especially when he died young, (57). He died young in part because he refused to go see a doctor for his stomach pains when they first started. He was, (unwisely) exhibiting the toughness he demanded of his men. It turned out to be cancer. We’ll never know how many championships he would have won with the Redskins. What’s interesting is to speculate how many he would have won in New York if picked to replace Jim Lee Howell or even Steve Owen. The Giants were famous for losing title games in that era, winning in 1956 but losing in 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 and 1963, (two of those to Lombardi’s Packers). Lombardi had the exact reverse record in title games. And virtually all the main players of his Packer teams, (at least the 1961-62 champs) had been on the 1958 team he inherited, which won one game. Lombardi’s Packers are the only NFL team to win 5 championships in one decade.

Walter Alston, baseball 29 points in 23 seasons (1.26)
Championships: 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965 (4)
Runner-up: 1956, 1966, 1974 (3)
2nd Place/NLCS: 1954, 1961, 1962 (3)
Alston was a quiet, dignified, business-like man who guided the Dodgers through their most successful era without all the noise generated by his predecessors Leo Durocher and Charley Dressen or by his successor Tommy Lasorda. His greatest team might have been the 1962 team that went 101-61 and scored more runs than the 1961 Yankees but lost in a playoff to the Giants. That team might well have done to the Yankees what they did the next year and beaten the Bombers twice in a row. He oversaw the transition from the Brooklyn Dodgers, a power-laden team in a bandbox ballpark to the Los Angeles Dodgers, a speed team playing at first in, (one corner of) the vast Los Angeles Coliseum, and the jewel of baseball, Dodger Stadium, with its dead air. His 1959 champs had the worst record for a championships team prior to the era of Divisional play. They were a polygot of old Brooklyn Dodgers, young LA Dodgers and journeymen players. But they won it all. Nobody won more consistently with such different types of teams.

Jack Adams, hockey 28 points in 20 seasons, (1.40)
Championships: 1936, 1937, 1943 (3)
Runner-up: 1934, 1941, 1942 (3)
Semis: 1933, 1939, 1940, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947 (7)
Adams was coach of the Detroit Red Wings for 20 years, through thick and thin. He coached them for so long they weren’t even the Red Wings when he began- they were the Detroit Cougars. He benefits in these rankings from being in the 6 team NHL era, when if you could avoid finishing in the bottom third of the league, you were already in the semi-finals.

Joe Torre, baseball 28 points in 29 seasons (0.97)
Championships: 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 (4)
Runner-Up: 2001, 2003 (2)
Semis: 1982, 2004, 2008, 2009 (4)
Will somebody put this guy in the Hall of Fame? He was at a least a border-line Hall of Famer as a player, (.297 hitter with 2342 hits, 655 for extra bases despite no speed, a batting title and an MVP), and will surely be a Hall of Fame manager. It should be based on an entire career in baseball. He’s in his 70’s. Why wait? Like Stengel he coached mostly bad teams before coming to the Yankees but we was the coach of that 1982 Braves team that was the first good team of the Turner Era. And he did coach the best team of this era, the 1998 Yankees, a team noted at the time for having no superstars, (although Jeter and Rivera surely became that). Winning 4 World Series in five years and 3 in a row is greater accomplishment than it would have been in the old days when you didn’t have to win three post season series to do it. Then he went on to more success with the Dodgers.

Punch Imlach, hockey 27 points in 14 seasons (1.93)
Championships: 1962, 1963, 1964, 1967 (4)
Runner-up: 1959, 1960 (2)
Semis: 1961, 1965, 1966 (3)
The other great coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. His teams finished first in the standings only once but they were always ready for the playoffs, winning from the third place spot twice and from second once. He was also the team’s general manager and developed the sort of reputation George Allen had in football a decade later: obtaining veteran players from other teams and getting another good year or two out of them. But unlike Allen, he won championships doing that. He had a Lombardi-like reputation as a coach and felt the veteran players could “take it” better than younger players could. After his tenure with the Maple leafs he became the Buffalo Sabres first coach and general manager and helped get that franchise off the ground.

Steve Owen, football 27 points in 23 seasons (1.17)
Championships: 1934, 1938 (2)
Runner-Up: 1933, 1935, 1939, 1941, 1944, 1946 (6)
Second Place: 1937, 1943, 1950, 1951, 1952 (5)
Owen, (not Owens), was the first great coach of the New York Giants, a former lineman, (5-10, 227), who excelled as a defensive mastermind, famously coming up with the “Umbrella” defense that gave the Otto Graham so much trouble. He was good at getting to championship games but not at winning them, (a trend that would continue under his successors, Jim Lee Howell and Allie Sherman). He might have gotten to more of them except his 1943 and 1950 teams lost playoffs to teams they had already beaten twice that season. He later coached in the CFL.

Tony LaRussa, baseball 27 points in 35 seasons (0.77)
Championships: 1989, 2006, 2011 (3)
Runner-Up: 1988, 1990, 2004 (3)
Semis: 1983, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2005 (6)
LaRussa, like Scottie Bowman, has had success in several places, leading the White Sox to a 99 win season, best in the majors, in 1983, coaching the “Bash Brothers” teams to four division championships in Oakland and three World Series, although he only managed to win one title. Then he became the manager in St. Louis and made it to three more Series, winning two of them. He never had a run of championships like Bowman did so he finishes father down the list. LaRussa is primarily credited with the way bullpens are used today, developing the concept of an ace reliever “closer” over a “fireman”. I don’t agree with it but now everybody else does it, so I guess it must work.

Greg Popovich, basketball 25 points in 17 years ((1.47)
Championships: 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 (4)
Runner-Up: 2013 (1)
Semis: 2001, 2008, 2012 (3)
Losing two close games to the reigning dynasty of the NBA, (if we can call them that) produced the first loss in the Finals for Popovich. Otherwise he’d be 5-0. The question is: does he have any championships left? It seems apparent that the Spurs are going have to do some major rebuilding in the near future and “Pop” is 64 and has been coaching them for the last 17 years.

Don Shula, football 24 points in 33 years (0.73)
Championships: 1972, 1973 (2)
Runner-up: 1964, 1968, 1971, 1982, 1984 (5)
2nd place/Semis: 1965, 1966, 1985, 1992 (4)
Don Shula won more games than any other NFL coach, even George Halas and Curley Lambeau. He coached some of the best teams ever: the 1964 Colts were the third highest scoring team in NFL history to that date. His 1965 was shredded by injuries yet still came within a disputed field goal in Green Bay of going back to the NFL title game with halfback Tom Matte playing quarterback. His 1967 was undefeated until the last game of the year before losing to Rams, who wound up with the same record and made the playoffs instead of them. His 1968 and 1972 teams lost their starting quarterback early on and so he turned to veteran journeyman Earl Morrall who led each team to the Super Bowl. The 1972 team, of course is the only NFL team to go undefeated and untied throughout the regular season and playoffs. His teams went to the Super Bowl five times. So why isn’t he higher on this list? He was 2-5 in ultimate games, with three of the loses considered upsets. Also, his championship-caliber teams all had Bill Arnsparger-coached defenses. But he couldn’t hold on to Arnsparger, who kept wanting to be a head coach. Then there was the Dan Marino Era where first he and Jimmy Johnson made the assumption that because they had Marino, they didn’t need anything more for the passing game and kept drafting running backs, linemen and defensive players instead. I grew up rooting for his teams but I have to say that he was a great coach but an over-rated great coach.

Miller Huggins, baseball 23 points in 17 years ((1.35)
Championships: 1923, 1927, 1928 (3)
Runner-Up: 1921, 1922, 1926 (3)
2nd Place: 1924, 1929 (2)
Would we have ever heard of Miller Huggins without Babe Ruth? Who knows? But everyone who described him, including Branch Rickey, considered him one of the smartest baseball men who ever lived. And it takes more than just a star player- even that one- to win championships. He died before the 1929 season was completed but I thought I should give him credit for the second place finish that year.

Fred Clarke, baseball 23 points in 19 years (1.21)
Championships: 1901, 1902, 1909 (3)
Runner-Up: 1900, 1903 (2)
2nd Place: 1905, 1907, 1908, 1912 (4)
Clarke was the coach of the first team ever to lose a World Series, the 1903 Pittsburgh Pirates who got upset by the Boston Americans (Red Sox) of the fledgling American League. But the year before he had coached the team that won the pennant by the largest margin ever, (27 ½ games). A Hall of Fame player, (.312 lifetime average), he became player-manager of the Louisville Colonels, then a National league team, at the age of 24. The Colonel’s owner, Barney Dreyfuss, heard that the NL was going to contract from 12 to 8 teams for the 1900 season and that the Louisville franchise was one of the four to be disbanded. He bought a half interest in the Pittsburgh Pirates and transferred all his best players including Clarke and Honus Wagner to Pittsburgh. Clarke continued as player-manager until 1911, (and pinch-hit a few times after that, remaining the Pirate’s manager until 1915.

Al Arbour, hockey 23 points in 23 years (1.00)
Championships: 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 (4)
Runner-Up: 1984 (1)
Semis: 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1993 (6)
Hockey in the 1970’s and 80’s was all about dynasties passing the torch. The Canadiens won four Stanley Cups from 1976-79. They swept the two-time defending champions Philadelphia Flyers in the finals and twice beat Al Arbour’s New York Islanders in the conference finals, (the NHL semi-finals). Arbour’s teams then won four championships in a row themselves, sweeping the up and coming Edmonton Oilers with the new superstar, Wayne Gretzky in the last of them. The next year Gretzky and his teammates beat Arbour’s team in five and went on to win 4 of 5 NHL titles before Gretzky ended the era by taking his talents to LA. Neither Arbour nor the Isles were anything special after their great period. He had served quite an apprenticeship, losing in the semi-finals five times before breaking through to win 4 of 5 finals. Unfortunately for Al, under the scoring system I’ve set up, he gets no points for those seasons because of the WHA. When there are two leagues I’m only giving credit to the championship participant in each league. That’s their sport’s “Final Four”. But nothing can take away those 4 championships in a row, something only seven coaches have ever done.

Chuck Noll, football 23 points in 23 years (1.00)
Championships: 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979 (4)
Runner-Up:
Semis: 1972, 1976, 1984 (3)
For some reason you rarely hear the name Chuck Noll when the greatest coaches are mentioned but he remains the only coach to win 4 Super Bowls. His record is basically identical to Al Arbour’s except he didn’t win them in a row and didn’t have a rival league so he didn’t have to make the Super Bowl to get points. Like Al, he was basically an also-ran after the glory era was over. Maybe the best context for looking at Chuck’s career is that the Steelers had been the worst organization in the sport until he took over and since then they’ve been the best.

Tom Landry, football 23 points in 29 seasons (0.79)
Championships: 1971, 1977 (2)
Runner-Up: 1970, 1975, 1978 (3)
Semis: 1966, 1967, 1972, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1982 (7)
The Cowboys were the first franchise to advertise themselves as “America’s Team”. What they were was the team that everybody in America wanted to beat. They had the best organization: Tex Schram as GM, Gil Brandt as scouting director and Tom Landry on the sidelines. They had the best uniforms and in those uniforms were the most recognizable line-up of any team. Most of their players seemed to wind up in the Pro Bowl each year and often in the Super Bowl as well. It was like a wonderful machine, turning out winner after winner. I have series of team history tapes I got from NFL films a while back and it seemed each of them, especially those teams in the NFC East, had a special section on their great rivalry with the Cowboys- not each other. They all had the Cowboys as their greatest rival. But the wonderful machine seemed to lose its lubrication in the mid-80s, grinding to a 3-13 halt in 1988. The great triumvirate all lost their jobs and new regime was brought in by new owner, Jerry Jones. Landry’s record is actually a bit disappointing for all the good teams he had, (20 winning seasons in a row at one point). There was no run of tiles: only 2 of them, although his titanic battles with Chuck Noll’s Steelers were two of the greatest Super Bowls of all time. They were really battles to determine who the “Team of the 70’s” was but Landry lost them both. He also lost two of the best NFL Championship games of all time to Lombardi’s Packers. A 5-7 record in NFL/NFC title games didn’t help. The new Cowboy regime went on to win 3 Super Bowls in 4 years from 1992-95, something Landry never quite matched. He always contended but never dominated.

Glen Sather, hockey 22 points in 15 years (1.47)
Championships: 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 (4)
Runner-Up: 1979, 1983 (2)
Semis:
As Miller Huggins’ reputation is tied to the presence of Babe Ruth on his roster, so Glen Sather’s is tied to Wayne Gretzky. But, as with Huggins and Ruth, it took more than just the game’s greatest player to win those championships. They might have won 5 in a row had not a rookie named Steve Smith accidently put in a goal for the Calgary Flames, (Smith was an Oiler), in the 7th game of their 1986 series. The team Sather had built actually won another Cup- minus Gretzky, now an LA King- in 1990. But he had retired as coach by then, although he was still the GM.

Tommy Ivan, hockey 21 points in 9 years (2.33)
Championships: 1950, 1952, 1954 (3)
Runner-Up: 1948, 1949 (2)
Semis: 1951, 1953 (2)
Ivan’s career as a player was cut short in the minor leagues by a broken cheekbone. He became a referee and then a minor league coach for the Red Wings to stay in the game. There he discovered Gordie Howe. He became the Red Wing’s coach in 1947 and guided them through their greatest era, winning 6 regular season pennants and three Stanley Cups in only 7 seasons. Then he accepted a position as general manager of the Chicago Black Hawks, who were a dying franchise at the time, (the finished last 9 times in 11 years). He coached them for a couple of seasons but as their GM built up their farm system and used it to create the Black Hawk teams that won the Cup in 1961 to break the Canadien’s string of 5 straight and remained contenders and the league’s most exciting offensive team throughout the 60’s. The Red Wings also won the Cup the year after he left with the team he’d built up. Their 1952 team was one of the greatest in the history of the league, sweeping both the other two major powers of the period, the Maple Leafs and Canadiens to win the Cup. He would obviously rank much higher if he had coached longer but he was a builder as well as a coach.

Lester Patrick, hockey 21 points in 13 years, ((1.62)
Championships: 1928, 1933 (2)
Runner-Up: 1929, 1932, 1937 (3)
Semis: 1927, 1930, 1931, 1935, 1939 (5)
I’ll bet you didn’t know that the New York Rangers were once a perennial Stanley Cup contender. They were in the era before World War II under their Coach Lester Patrick, who had had what turned out to be a Hall-of-Fame career as a player before that. You might have heard of Patrick before: he’s the coach, (and general manager) who installed himself in his team’s goal at age 44 in 1928 and saved 18 of 19 shots to allow his team to secure a lead and the Cup. The details are interesting. The Ranger’s regular goalie had been hit in the eye by the puck and had to be removed from the game. Strangely, considering the limited equipment used at that time, it was not the practice to have more than one goalie on a roster. But, with the permission of the other team’s coach, a substitute goalie could be used if one were present. Patrick wanted to use Alec Connell, the goalie of the Ottawa Senators, who was in the stands that night but the Montreal Maroon’s coach, Eddie Gerard, refused to let him. Gerard had the same reaction to Hugh McCormick, a minor-league goalie. However he didn’t object to Patrick himself, figuring his team could get a few past “the old man”, who hadn’t even been a goalie when he played: he was a defenseman. Patrick is shown in a famous photo taken in the net, (presumably after the game), wearing padding on his legs but nowhere else, (and, of course, no headgear). His white hair is parted won the middle. His team won in overtime. He retired in 1939 but was still the GM when the Rangers won the Cup 1940. They wouldn’t win again until 1994.

Bill Belichick, football 21 points in 18 years (1.17)
Championships: 2001, 2003, 2004 (3)
Runner-Up: 2007, 2011 (2)
Semis: 2006, 2013 (2)
As I mentioned, it seems strange that, although the Patriots still have the image of the “reigning dynasty” in football, every other Boston area team has won their sport’s championship since the Pats last did. Just as Popovich is looking at a major rebuilding project, Belichcik has serious problems with the Gronkowski and Hernandez situations. And how many more years will Tom Brady be the game’s best quarterback? And, at 61, does Belichick want to go through another rebuilding cycle?

Sparky Anderson, baseball 21 points in 26 seasons (0.81)
Championships: 1975, 1976, 1984 (3)
Runner-Up: 1970, 1972 (2)
Semis: 1973, 1987 (2)
Sparky always seemed to me the type of manager a player would want to play for. He was shrewd in his decision making and his handling of players but always seemed upbeat, generating a positive attiude. And unlike his contemporary, Tommy Lasorda, it didn’t seem to be just an act he put on for the cameras. He coached a team that may have had the best day-to-day line-up any baseball team ever had, The Big Red Machine, (Bench, Perez, Morgan, Concepcion, Rose, Foster, Geronimo and Griffey and their peak), and then moved on to Detroit and coached another one of the best teams ever, the 1984 Tigers, who started the season 35-5 and ended it by going 7-1 in the playoffs.

Guy Chamberlin, football 20 points in 6 seasons (3.33)
Championships: 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926 (4)
Runner-Up:
3rd or 4th place:
The first great NFL team was the Canton Bulldogs, who went undefeated in 1921-22, (but with 3 ties). Those are two of only eight NFL teams to have undefeated regular seasons, the others being the 1929 Packers, (who also had a tie), the 1934 and 1942 Bears, (who lost the title game), the 1948 Browns, (who were in the AAFC), the 1972 Dolphins, (who won it all), and the 2007 Patriots, (who got beat in the Super Bowl). Chamberlain was their player-manager. The Bulldogs actually pre-dated the NFL, having been in existence since 1904. They had had a great rivalry with the Massillon Tigers for years before joining the NFL at the request of their most famous player, Jim Thorpe, who became the new league’s first President. He was a player-President until he retired from the field in 1920. They had great on-the-field success under Chamberlin but without Thorpe as a drawing card, they couldn’t afford to pay the salaries of the players so the team was sold to a Cleveland businessman for the 1924 season. The Cleveland Bulldogs won a third straight league title. Chamberlin then moved on to an even older team, the Frankford Yellow Jackets, (founded 1899), and won another NFL title there in 1926. His overall winning percentage, (76%) is the best in NFL history. One wonders how many championships he might have had if he hadn’t retired as a coach when he retired as a player.

Just missed the Cut:
19 points- Bobby Cox, baseball
18 points- Ray Flaherty and Joe Gibbs, football and Art Ross, hockey
17 points- KC Jones, basketball and Bill Walsh, football
16 points- Billy Southworth and Dick Williams, baseball, Alex Hannum and Bobby McDermott, basketball
15 points- Bill McKechnie, baseball, Cecil Hart, hockey, Weeb Ewbank, football


My primary source for this information is Sports Reference.com, which has links to pages on Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NHL and the NBA. For NBL information I had to get out my old book “The Sports Encyclopedia: Basketball”, which I got in 1989. I also used Wikipedia and The Association for Professional Basketball Research site that gave me information on the World Professional Basketball Tournament.