Hollinger & Duncan NBA Show - NBA Basketball Podcast · John Hollinger and Nate Duncan

Coach Rankings 2025-26

·1 hr 7 min·2 clips

The NBA coach is now a "CEO job" with delegation, front-office coordination, and staff hiring.

They open with coach rankings and immediately turn the question back on itself. What actually makes a good coach? The answer comes in pieces, not one neat definition. Coaching is framed as game planning, preparation, motivation, locker room management, season management, player development, and coordination with ownership and the front office. That list is long for a reason. The job is long. They keep the tone loose enough to leave room for a little banter while the argument gets built. From there, the ranking becomes a test of how much credit a coach deserves for holding everything together. They talk through the difficulty of sorting young coaches early, especially when some of them have not even been seen in the playoffs yet. That makes the evaluation shaky, but not useless. Steve Kerr comes in at number five. The case for him leans on people management and the ability to keep difficult personalities rowing in the same direction. His teams have a clear style, and that style is tied to his best player in a way that looks intentional rather than accidental. They also acknowledge that not every recent decision has landed cleanly, including a young player situation that still draws local angst. Ty Lue comes up as another reference point, and the championship on his resume does not get erased just because it is inconvenient to the argument. The discussion also weighs coaches who have reached the Finals or made repeated conference finals. That matters because the rankings are built from body of work, not just current mood. The whole segment keeps returning to the same tension. How much of success belongs to the coach, and how much belongs to roster quality, star power, and organizational alignment? They do not flatten that tension. They use it. The result is a ranking that feels provisional in a useful way. It leaves room for disagreement without pretending disagreement means the exercise failed. It is a coaching debate that treats coaching as a craft, but also as a moving target.

As heard by us

A coaching ranking that treats the job as a layered craft, not just a sideline title.

This episode treats coaching as more than a bench role. Game plans, preparation, motivation, locker room politics, season management, player development, and the push and pull with the front office all shape the ranking.

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Why you'd press play

For a coach-ranking debate that treats coaching like a real multi-job puzzle.

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