Average NBA Career Length for Coaches and GMs

After a post about average NBA career length for players I feel like there’s a follow-up needed…
the same information about coaches and general managers ;-)

On one hand gathering data for this one was easier because pages at basketball-reference.com about coaches and GMs include columns “years spent in the NBA” but on the other hand age information required checking all coaches individually. Well, you can’t always have such beautiful database suited to your strange questions ;-)

As you can easily calculate from above links Average NBA Career Length for 294 Coaches is 5,05 years.
So barely longer than players. Is it surprising or not?

Below is a full breakdown [I had to use 5-year intervals because of small one-year sample sizes]:

 

Premature End, 30 Years of Fired Coaches in NBA

With inevitable early departure of Kurt Rambis from Timberwolves I wondered…
Which NBA Team have Fired Most Coaches in the Last 30 Years?
And How many of them Left Early on Their Own Terms?

So I visited Professional Basketball Transactions Archive and here’s what I’ve found…
Starting with curiosities…

Did you know there were three trades involving coaches in that period?
On 1983-06-07 Nets traded rights to Fred Roberts, 1983 second round pick (#46-Kevin Williams) to Spurs who agreed to release head coach Stan Albeck from his contract, thus allowing Nets to sign him.
On 2003-06-11 Rockets sent to Knicks second round pick (2005 #54-Dijon Thompson) as compensation for agreeing to release head coach Jeff Van Gundy from his contract and on 2007-06-06 Magic sent 2008 second round pick (#52-Darnell Jackson) to Heat as a compensation for head coach Stan Van Gundy.
Wow, those Van Gundy brothers were a valuable commodity ;-)

Back to the point, with another fired head coach, how will Timberwolves look historically?

 

All NBA Championships by Players and Coaches

Today’s post is a very light one in nature but heavy in bytes and was sponsored by a perspective “I’ve spent way too much time searching for something which should be easy to find”. It’s also a timely topic: list of ALL NBA championship titles by players, coaches, both, rings won with different teams etc. Here are examples why this subject IMHO should be covered better: List at Wikipedia and List at NBAUniverse.com.
Why exactly 5 titles was the cut off? Nobody could be interested in players with 3 rings? Four championships wasn’t good enough to qualify or what? Am I the only one who cares about this? ;-)

UPDATED after 2012 playoffs!

But let’s start with coaches because this topic is actually covered [well, there wasn’t that many of them ;-)]
so I’ve only added information about coaches who won both as coaches AND as players.
[All data in this post comes from http://www.basketball-reference.com]

 

Salary and contracts of NBA coaches

Have you ever wondered why information about coaches’ salaries in the NBA is so hard to find? I have.
Information about players’ salaries in the NBA is not only useful for fans but also they can be easily found in many, many, many places. The same can’t be said about coaches’ contracts and earnings!

I propose the open project for coaches’ contracts to create the most comprehensive and up to date database. In the last two days I spent way too many hours researching the hell out of google and this is what I’ve collected from last 11 seasons…

BTW, please remember about these notes:

• I do not have any inside information and I can’t guarantee accuracy any of these reports.
• All salaries are in millions of dollars.
• I don’t take into consideration future “Team Options” because it’s simply 1-year extension on a set scale.
• Right now I have 286 coaches’ salaries out of 379 possible but I hope thanks to you this list will grow…
• If you know any information behind “???” please let me know in the comments or via e-mail.
• All information provided by others can be found in the comments sections.
• “2013-14” season means either new contract which will take effect next year or simply next year of old one.
• The list is sorted descending by season and then ascending by city/team’s name.
• Some teams had more than one coach during given year so those teams show up more than once.
• I’ll update this post as often as needed/possible – LAST EDIT: 4 July 2013

Warning! Now it’s the time for long tables…

 

Coaches: Ex-Players VS no NBA playing experience

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

 

NBA Coaches without Coaching Experience

Mark Jackson was named Warriors’ head coach because “his leadership skills as a player more than outweighed his lack of coaching experience” and according to Sam Amick from SI.com:
Golden State’s future looking bright with the addition of Jackson.

What’s more, here’s another IMHO noteworthy quote:

“Sources said West was instrumental in the hiring, as he had made it clear he wasn’t looking for a ‘retread’ coach and that he preferred candidates who played the game professionally. That background and his national television spot clearly give Jackson credibility among the game’s modern-day players and could perhaps come in handy during free agency”

.

Is a long career as a player and huge bank of TV clichés enough for a coaching job in the NBA?
I mean no disrespect but if the answer is “no”, Jackson will fail, if “yes” what would it say to us about this job?
Well, we would rehash old topic about stat geeks and coaches and deck chairs.

On one hand I’ve heard a lot of complaints among fans that teams recycle the same coaches over and over, on the other hand I found it fascinating that there’s a highly paid job which requires no similar experience so I’ve decided to explore history for another examples of NBA coaches without coaching experience…

Thanks to basketball-reference.com we have a full list of coaches employed by the NBA but to cut this project into reasonable time I’ve decided to look only at coaches who coached in the last 10 years [exactly 100!] and who had no previous coaching experience either as an assistant or at other basketball levels. Here’s the full list: