Rastal Ramblingsl: Don Nelson Leaves Behind Trailblazing Legacy

Don Nelson may not have never claimed the ultimate prize by winning a championship as head coach, but you can see his impact on the game and his enduring legacy everywhere in the modern NBA.

One of basketball’s all-time great innovators and characters, Nelson passed away this past Sunday at the age of 86. As a player, Nelson won five championships with the Red Auerbach era Boston Celtics. But it was his trailblazing years as a coach that solidified his place as a basketball legend.

For the Milwaukee Bucks, the most revered eras in the franchise’s history are naturally the two that yielded championships. But there was plenty of meaningful Bucks basketball between Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Giannis Antetokounmpo, and the best sustained period over that stretch came thanks to Nellie Ball.

Milwaukee won seven consecutive division titles under Nelson and had a seven-year stretch where they never finished worse than second in the Eastern Conference standings. However, they had the misfortune of running into the Larry Bird era Celtics or the Julius Irving era Philadelphia 76ers in the playoffs every year and could never quite get over the hump and into the NBA Finals.

Though those Bucks never won a title, they were the lab for Nelson’s innovations that proved to be well ahead of his time. Nellie Ball popularized the idea of a point forward with Marques Johnson and Paul Pressey, which the Chicago Bulls later used to great effect with Scottie Pippen during their 1990s dynastic run and has been a staple during the career of LeBron James.

Nellie Ball’s up-tempo, run-and-gun style that sacrificed size for speed, exploited mismatches and called for a heavy dose of three-pointers was deeply influential. While Nellie Ball was frequently lambasted for having a clear ceiling that couldn’t go all the way in the playoffs, the fingerprints of Nellie Ball can be seen all over winning formulas in today’s NBA where an emphasis on the three ball, small-ball lineups and positionless basketball are easy to find.

Though he himself never won a championship as a coach, Nelson was instrumental in the Dallas Mavericks drafting Dirk Nowitzki and the Golden State Warriors drafting Steph Curry. He also helped set Steve Nash down the path of becoming a two-time NBA MVP.

Nelson’s 1,335 regular-season wins were the most by any NBA head coach at the time of his retirement, before later being passed by Gregg Popovich. But the wins tell such a small part of his story and his impact on basketball. The legacies of the great innovators and characters last far beyond a career or even a lifetime. That is most certainly true of Don Nelson.