During research for my post about coaches without no previous coaching experience I’ve stumbled into another IMHO interesting question: how do ex-players who became coaches compare to coaches without playing experience in the NBA?
I don’t think I can answer a question “from which group SHOULD you hire?” – every situation is different because of roster, expectations, previous experience etc but I think it’s worth exploring.
My starting point was again at Basketball-Reference.com where you can find full list of coaches employed by the NBA but this time I’ve used all 294 names [because this project could be automated].
For a change let’s start with a bang and curiosities will follow.
Here’s All-Time Data
| Coaches [Totals] | Years | Games | Wins | Losses | W-L% | Conf | Champ |
| Ex-Players | 882 | 61263 | 31057 | 30206 | 0,507 | 62 | 38 |
| Didn’t play in NBA | 602 | 40005 | 19577 | 20428 | 0,489 | 20 | 26 |
| Coaches [Averages] | Years | Games | Wins | Losses | W-L% | Conf | Champ |
| Ex-Players | 5,31 | 369,05 | 187,09 | 181,96 | 0,507 | 0,373 | 0,233 |
| Didn’t play in NBA | 4,70 | 312,54 | 152,95 | 159,59 | 0,489 | 0,156 | 0,206 |
Weak Side Awareness 