Real Coach Ratings for the 30 NBA Head Coaches: the First Ever

REAL COACH RATINGS
As of October, 2008, before the 2008-09 season began
A User Guide Follows

1 Los Angeles Lakers Phil Jackson 5071.8
2 San Antonio Spurs Gregg Popovich 2824.0
3 Utah Jazz Jerry Sloan 1277.3
4 Houston Rockets Rick Adelman 967.6
5 Charlotte Bobcats Larry Brown 523.0
6 New York Knicks Mike D'Antoni 519.0
7 Orlando Magic Stan Van Gundy 486.6
8 Cleveland Cavaliers Mike Brown 421.8
9 Dallas Mavericks Rick Carlisle 276.0
10 New Orleans Hornets Byron Scott 217.6
11 Chicago Bulls Vinny Del Negro 200.0
12 Detroit Pistons Michael Curry 200.0
13 Miami Heat Erik Spoelstra 200.0
14 Denver Nuggets George Karl 109.8
15 Sacramento Kings Reggie Theus 106.6
16 New Jersey Nets Lawrence Frank 86.4
17 Boston Celtics Doc Rivers 74.8
18 Milwaukee Bucks Scott Skiles 0.0
19 Indiana Pacers Jim O'Brien -14.4
20 Philadelphia 76ers Maurice Cheeks -85.2
21 Memphis Grizzlies Marc Iavaroni -85.4
22 Portland Trail Blazers Nate McMillan -157.0
23 Phoenix Suns Terry Porter -180.0
24 Golden State Warriors Don Nelson -205.8
25 Toronto Raptors Sam Mitchell -237.6
26 Washington Wizards Eddie Jordan -465.0
27 Minnesota Timberwolves Randy Wittman -538.8
28 Oklahoma City Thunder P.J. Carlesimo -632.4
29 Atlanta Hawks Mike Woodson -633.6
30 Los Angeles Clippers Mike Dunleavy -686.0

USER GUIDE FOR THE REAL COACH RATINGS
I am proud and pleased to present what is probably the world's first serious effort to rate and rank all of the current NBA head coaches. Why should the coaches hide behind a black curtain? Concerning coaches, there is virtually a total lack of the kind of statistical comparing and contrasting that goes on with players 24/7. I for one think it is way overdue that coaches be fairly and systematically compared and contrasted.

I can pretty much guarantee you that no one has ever, even with the capabilities created by the internet age, put in as much effort and thought as I have into fairly comparing NBA coaches with widely different lengths of time spent in professional head coaching. And this system CAN be used in other Leagues, other countries, and on other planets. If there are any other basketball planets, that is!

As I was working on this I often had a sinking feeling that trying to fairly compare coaches with more than 10 years of experience with those with less than 2 years experience would be in the end impossible. But I persevered and scrapped and fought my way to the goal line and got it done. I achieved all of the balancing that I needed to achieve. Specifically, for example, I kept the points given for experience within reason, while making sure that regular season and playoff losses were penalized to the full extent they should be.

You must keep in mind that any coach who has been fired for not winning enough in the regular season, for not winning enough in the playoffs, or for both, and has not been rehired by another team, is not on this list. We don't care about them. The whole idea in multi-billion dollar professional sports is to win more than you lose, and that most obviously and most definitely includes the coaches. So a 50/50 record in either the regular season or in the playoffs is not good enough long term, and coaches who are not better than .500 get fired and not rehired sooner or later, and those who have met that fate already are not on this list.

To reflect the reality that coaches who can not win more than they lose are sooner or later going to be fired, and will most likely never advance in the playoffs before they are fired, it is necessary to make sure that losses entail a bigger negative number than do wins entail a positive number. But we have to avoid getting carried away. So when I add in the amount given for experience, the apparent gap between the award for winning and the penalty for losing is shrunk down to a reasonably small amount.

In the case of all coaches who have coached fewer than 600 games (which is currently 19 out of 30 of them) since a full point is given for every regular season game for just the experience factor, and since the award for a regular season win is 5 points, and since the penalty for a regular season loss is minus 7 points, these younger, less experienced coaches break even just by achieving a 50/50 regular season record. But heck, they are learning. And if they learn the right things, than they might become the next Phil Jackson or Rick Adelman!

Coaches who have coached more than 600 games must do a little better than .500 in the regular season to achieve a net positive toward their overall Real Coach Ratings. The numerical details will be presented below.

The rating system demands a little bit more from all coaches, regardless of experience, for the playoffs. All the coaches must do a little better than .500 in the playoffs to get a net positive score toward their Real Coach Ratings. Once again, the numerical details will be presented below, in the section that begins "True Net Scores..."

BE CAREFUL REGARDING THE VERY LARGE TIME SCALE OF THESE RATINGS
Keep in mind that each coach is rated using information from every season that he has been a head coach in the NBA. It is very plausible that some of the coaches will currently be substantially better or substantially worse than their overall career ratings indicate.

But while I am on this subject, I want to warn you to not make the assumption that all or even most coaches get better as they accumulate more and more experience. There is no empirical evidence I know of to back that up, and nor is it in my view obvious or even likely to be true most or much of the time. It is plausible that coaches do not really improve that much after roughly 5 or 6 years of experience. It is also plausible that some of the heaviest experience coaches have not completely updated their beliefs and coaching schemes to reflect the current ways of basketball. They may be hurting their teams a little or even a lot by persisting with strategies and tactics that used to work well years ago but are not working very well in the NBA in 2008.

CERTAIN VETERAN PLAYERS CAN COACH THEMSELVES TO A LARGE EXTENT
Always keep in mind that older, more veteran teams can coach themselves to one extent or another, particularly if the roster is both highly skilled and highly experienced. It doesn't matter who comes up with the winning schemes and patterns; what matters is that someone does. Younger teams, however, always need a good coaching staff to make headway in the playoffs.

Quest for the Ring has gone on record claiming that the 2007-08 Champion Boston Celtics are a good example of a team that could coach itself well to a large extent.

POSITIVE FACTORS THAT AFFECT REAL COACH RATINGS
1. Number of Regular Season Games Coached: The Experience Factor:
One Point is given for each regular season game coached up to 600 games, which is almost 7 1/2 seasons worth of games. If a Coach has not learned just about everything he needs to by this point, he most likely never will, so the award for experience is sharply reduced for all games coached beyond 600. 0.2 points is given for games 601 through 1,000. Nothing at all is given for any games coached beyond 1,000 games.

What about rookie and near rookie coaches? Just because they have never coached in the NBA, should their experience rating be zero? No, I don't believe so. They either have substantial coaching experience in other Leagues, or they were extremely talented and/or intelligent players, or both, or else they would not have been hired to be a head Coach in the NBA. So any coach who has coached for fewer than 200 games is given exactly 200 points for experience. So rookie coaches start out with Real Coach Ratings of 200.

Calculations indicate that the average Real Coach Rating is currently 321.4. So the objective of all rookie coaches must be to increase their starting rating of 200 to at least the average rating among of all coaches (321) as soon as they can do so. You can think of the range between 0 and 321 as "the proving ground" or even the "make it or break it range" for coaches. Most coaches who drop below zero instead of going up from 200 during their first 3-6 years will be bounced out of the NBA.

Coaches who have ratings below 200 and especially coaches who have ratings below zero should be fired unless the managers and owners involved are sure that the coach has not had competitive players to work with, or are sure that the coach is getting better at his job, or if there is some other unusual mitigating factor.

Coaches who persist as coaches with Real Player Ratings below 200, and especially with Real Coach Ratings below zero, are frequently going to be men who have very cordial relations with the managers and owners. In other words, they are being kept on the payroll because the managers and/or the owners involved personally like the coach in question enough to brush aside any concerns about whether that coach is doing a good enough job for their team. These dubious coaches are given the benefit of the doubt, in other words, or sort of a free pass.

It is also true that some managers and owners live in fear that they might go from bad to worse if they exchange one coach for another. They simply do not have enough courage to strike out and try a rookie or a near-rookie coach, or to pick up a coach who has been fired by another team but who deserves a second chance.

But back to the factors we go:
2. Number of Playoff Season Games Coached: the Playoff Experience Factor:
Three points are awarded for every playoff game coached regardless of result. The limit is going to be 300 such games. Only Phil Jackson, who has coached a mind boggling 277 playoff games, has any chance of coming up to the limit any time soon.

3. Number of Games Coached With Current Team:
This is a supplementary experience score which credits coaches who have gone the longest without being fired by their current teams. The points given are 0.3 for all games coached with the team the Coach is currently working for.

The one side of the coin regarding this is that the coach must be doing what the organization wants to avoid being fired, and he can't be a total failure basketball wise, so he deserves credit in proportion to how long he has kept his post. The other side of the coin is that the more experience a Coach has with a particular team, the more valuable he is to that franchise, because he knows everybody and everything concerned with the franchise better and better with each passing year. Generally speaking, the more successive games a Coach has coached with the same team, the more effectively and efficiently he can help the team squeeze out wins that would otherwise be losses. Jerry Sloan, who coming in to 2008-09 had coached a mind boggling 1,591 games for the Jazz, is the ultimate example of a Coach who due to his many years with the same team is going to be more effective and efficient than he would be if he had just switched to a different team. Due partly to this factor, do not be surprised if the Jazz become a losing team shortly after Sloan finally retires.

Another name for this factor might be "franchise specific experience." This year the Dallas Mavericks hired a new head Coach, Rick Carlisle, who has a lot of prior experience with other teams. But he is brand new to the Mavericks, so be careful not to expect miracles or even to assume that his coaching is going to be as good as it has been in the past from the get go. Look instead for the Mavericks to get better and better as the season goes along. Because Carlisle needs time to merge his skills and abilities with the specific factors involved with making the Mavericks a playoff winner.

4. Regular Season Wins
5 points per regular season win.

5. Playoff Wins:
21 points per playoff win. A little more than half the teams make the playoffs. Theoretically, unless he is stuck with a truly lousy roster, any truly good coach can get his team into the playoffs. For a good coach, it really is not much of an accomplishment at all. But only the really good coaches can win in the playoffs. In the NBA, the regular season is quite honestly nothing more than the preseason for the "playoff season," which is the season which really matters when all is said and done.

Also, obviously, playoff games are generally more intense in all respects: individual players, team play as a whole, and coaching efforts made.

For all of these reasons, it is necessary to factor playoff games as being worth at least 4 times as much as regular season games.

NEGATIVE FACTORS THAT AFFECT REAL COACH RATINGS
1. Regular Season Losses:
7 points is charged for each regular season loss.

2. Playoff Losses:
30 points is charged for each playoff loss.

Now there will be some who leap out of their seats and say "this guy is off his rocker" when they see that the penalty for losing a playoff gamee is 30 points. I can assure you, ye of little faith, that I know exactly what I am doing and that this is precisely correct. I have already explained why playoff games must be valued at at least 4 times the valuation put on regular season games. A regular season loss is 7 points, and 4 times 7 is 28, and 30 is only marginally more than 28.

Moreover, consider the true underlying net positive and negative scores, which you get by combining the experience award and the winning or losing number:

TRUE NET SCORES COMBINING EXPERIENCE AND EVENT SCORES TOGETHER
Regular Season Win: 6 Points. But it is 5.2 points for coaches with between 600 and 1,000 games coached and it is 5 points for coaches with more than 1,000 games coached.

Regular Season Loss: Minus 6 Points. But it is minus 6.8 points for coaches with between 600 and 1,000 games coached and minus 7 points for coaches with more than 1,000 games coached.

Can you see what I think is the genius of this system? The more experienced coaches get experience points that obviously are not available to less experienced coaches. To partially or in some cases completely offset what would otherwise be an unfair advantage in the rating system, the more experienced coaches are expected to do somewhat better in winning and losing in order to achieve a net positive from their winning and losing toward their ratings. This is a primary mechanism used here that tends to even the playing field between coaches of widely differing amounts of experience, without being unfair to any type of coach. This whole project would have been largely a waste of time if I didn't have a good and fair way of varying the treatment of coaches with radically different amounts of experience, in this way.

Now here are the true net scores for playoff games:
Playoff Win: 24 points.

Playoff Loss: Minus 27 points.

Recall that all coaches get 3 points for experience for each playoff game. So you should be able to confirm these numbers.

Are these factore set in stone forever and ever? No, but adjustments will be few, far between, and minor in the coming months and years. And although this is not a perfect system, it is at the very least a very good system. And it is light years ahead of having no system at all with which to fairly compare coaches of radically differing amounts of professional basketball head coach experience.