Don Nelson, the Hall of Famer who won five championships as a player before a decades-long coaching career that included a brief stint with the Knicks, died Sunday, his family said in a statement.
He was 86 years old. A cause of death wasn’t revealed.
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“On Sunday morning our beloved husband, dad, grandfather and great-grandfather Don Nelson peacefully went to be with the Lord, surrounded by his loving family,” Nelson’s family said in a statement, according to NBA reporter Marc Stein. “Throughout his last week, friends and family encircled him with love, sharing the blessing of his friendship and revisiting treasured memories.”
Before his second career as a coach, where he notably helped jumpstart the careers of Dirk Nowitzki and Steph Curry, the 6-foot-6 Nelson starred for the Celtics. He won five titles in Boston while averaging 10.3 points and 4.9 rebounds across a 14-year playing career that also included stints with the Chicago Zephyrs — who drafted him in the third round of the 1962 draft out of Iowa — and the Lakers.
Don Nelson, a Hall of Fame coach who spent one season at the helm for the Knicks, has died. AFP via Getty Images
Nelson — whose coaching career began as an assistant with the Bucks in 1976 and stretched until his final season as head coach of the Warriors in 2009-10 — won 1,335 games as a head coach, which sits as the second-most in NBA history behind former Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. He earned the league’s Coach of the Year honor three times. He invented “Nellie Ball,” which embraced a smaller lineup based on speed, and made it acceptable to use a point-forward. “Most of all I wanted to have all my best players on the court at the same time — regardless of position,” Nelson wrote in an article in The Players’ Tribune in 2016.
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That vision all started to take shape after landing his first chance as head coach during that first season in Milwaukee, when Larry Costello resigned in November 1976 after a 3-15 start.
“I expected to be an assistant at least two years, maybe longer, before trying for a head coaching job,” Nelson, just 36 years old at the time, said, according to the New York Times. “I don’t have the most experience in the world.”
But Nelson was never an assistant again. He served as the Bucks’ head coach until 1988, winning Coach of the Year twice — in 1983 and 1985 — and guiding Milwaukee to at least 50 wins across seven consecutive seasons. Then, after a season away from the sport, Nelson took over the Warriors for the 1988-89 campaign, staying in the Bay Area until his resignation in February 1995 with a 14-31 record. He earned his third and final Coach of the Year nod in 1992.
The Knicks hired him as their Pat Riley successor for the 1995-96 season, but Nelson was fired after just 59 games. He latched on with the Mavericks in 1997-98, though, and slowly started to restore their franchise. Dallas picked Nowitzki at No. 9 overall in the 1998 draft, and by the end of the 2000-01 campaign, the Mavericks were back in the playoffs.
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Nelson’s final stint as a coach doubled as a reunion, as he took over a Warriors team that hadn’t cracked the postseason since his resignation. Golden State, as the No. 8 seed, upset the Mavericks in the first round of Nelson’s first season. And while they didn’t make the playoffs again before his exit in September 2010, he coached Curry during his rookie campaign — with Curry acknowledging in a statement Sunday that “one of the big reasons I was drafted by the Warriors” was because of Nelson.
Don Nelson won five NBA championships as a player with the Celtics. Getty Images
“The story is he never liked rookies,” Curry said in a statement, “but from Day 1 he challenged me and gave me an opportunity to be my best self on the court. … He had an immeasurable impact on the sport and will go down as one of the greatest minds in the history of the game. He’s a true icon and will be missed by the countless number of people he touched, including myself, during a legendary career.”
The Warriors, in a statement, described Nelson — who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012 — as “a true basketball visionary who saw the game differently and was never afraid to challenge conventional thinking.” Chris Mullin, part of the “Run TMC” Golden State teams with Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond, said Nelson “was more than a coach to me.” Richmond said, in part, that Nelson “made the game fun.” Nowitzki credited Nelson with seeing “things in my game before I ever realized I could do them.”
“Nellie was ahead of his time,” Hardaway said in a statement, “and there was nobody else like him.”
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