How often has an NBA coach won a championship in his first year with a team? (2024)

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cavs are in the market for a new head coach after they fired J.B. Bickerstaff on Thursday. Bickerstaff helped turn them into a playoff team and did a lot of good things as cleveland.com’s Jimmy Watkins wrote, but they are now looking for a head coach who will take them to the next level.

The Cavs enter next season as a potential championship contender if Donovan Mitchell stays with the team. History does typically say that continuity wins championships. But that’s not always the case.

Plenty of teams since the 2000 NBA Finals have won titles with a coach in his first season with his team. Whether it’s as a full-year hire, or an interim, it has happened a handful of times and it shows that it can happen.

Here are the times a coach has won an NBA title in his first season coaching his team since 2000.

Phil Jackson, 2000 Los Angeles Lakers

Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal had progressed into at least the second round in each of their first two seasons with the Lakers. But they needed a different coach to take them over the top after the trio of Del Harris, Bill Bertka, who was an interim for one game, and Kurt Rambis couldn’t get it done.

In came Jackson, fresh off winning six championships in eight seasons with the Chicago Bulls for the 1999-2000 season. He immediately brought them success with an NBA title, the first of five he won with Bryant and the Lakers.

Los Angeles went 67-15 that season behind an MVP season from O’Neal, along with a great season from Bryant and good veteran play from Glen Rice, Derek Fisher and Robert Horry.

Larry Brown, 2004 Detroit Pistons

In some ways, Brown and the Pistons were a perfect match. He had great teams in Indiana and Philadelphia, but he could never get a title. The Pistons were a burgeoning powerhouse but couldn’t clear the last hurdle.

Brown came to Detroit in 2003 and turned the stout Pistons into champions, shocking Bryant, O’Neal and the Lakers in five games in the 2004 NBA Finals.

Behind the elite defensive play of Ben Wallace and Tayshaun Prince, the great leadership of Chauncey Billups and the quality scoring punch of Richard Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace, Brown got the most out of the Pistons and finally got that core, and himself, a ring.

Pat Riley, 2006 Miami Heat

Other than Phil Jackson, Riley is the only coach on this list who was previously a champion. While he had coached the Heat for eight previous seasons, he stepped down after the 2002-03 season and allowed Stan Van Gundy to step into the job.

Van Gundy did well in Miami, particularly in 2004-05 with a 59-win season. But he resigned 21 games into the following year, and Riley chose himself to be Van Gundy’s successor.

The move worked out well as Riley helped O’Neal and a young Dwyane Wade win 52 games and the 2006 NBA Finals without having a series go beyond six games. It was Riley’s first NBA title as a coach since he was with the Lakers in 1987-88.

Steve Kerr, 2015 Golden State Warriors

The Warriors raised a lot of eyebrows when they hired Kerr from the broadcast booth to replace Mark Jackson following a seven-game first-round series loss to the Clippers in the 2014 playoffs.

Kerr was the right man for the job as he and the Warriors became the dominant force of the NBA, winning 67 games behind the Splash Brothers in Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. In addition to their high-flying offense, they also had the NBA’s No. 1 defensive rating.

They parlayed that season into winning the 2015 NBA Finals, spoiling LeBron James’ return to Cleveland by knocking off a banged-up Cavaliers team in six games. That title was the first of four Kerr won in Golden State as the Warriors not only became a dynasty, but they also played a big role in reshaping how the NBA game is played.

Tyronn Lue, 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cavaliers were 30-11 in the 2015-16 season when they made the surprising decision to fire David Blatt and replace him with his top assistant in Lue.

Despite the coaching change, the Cavaliers finished atop the Eastern Conference again at 57-25, and they started the playoffs on a 10-game winning streak. Lue led the Cavaliers into an NBA Finals rematch with the Warriors in 2016, and he helped them become the first team in NBA history to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the Finals to win the team’s first championship.

Lue helped to get the most out of the Big 3 of James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love as they averaged 66.2 points between them in the playoffs.

Nick Nurse, 2019 Toronto Raptors

Nurse moved from the assistant seat next to Dwane Casey into the head coaching role for the 2018-19 season after back-to-back playoff exits against LeBron James and the Cavaliers.

Thanks to the blockbuster addition of Kawhi Leonard, Nurse and the Raptors were great right from the bat, winning 12 of their first 13 games. They finished second in the East with a 58-24 record.

Leonard’s elite play, especially his Game 7 buzzer-beater vs. the 76ers, along with Nurse’s coaching helped the Raptors get all the way to the 2019 NBA Finals. The Raptors surprised the Warriors, who had won back-to-back titles and were banged up with injuries to Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson by the end of the series, to claim their first NBA title.

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