Los Angeles Lakers: Pat Riley’s is basketball’s most successful person

When thinking of the greatest players of all-time, NBA fans are immediately going to think of Michael Jordan and the 90s Bulls. Kobe Bryant‘s five championships with the Los Angeles Lakers, Bill Russell‘s dominating run with the Boston Celtics, LeBron James‘ statistical dominance with three different franchises.

It is the common consensus that Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all-time, and while you could make the case and try to argue LeBron or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, most basketball fans gravitate towards Jordan.

Jordan is not the most successful basketball player of all-time, though, if we are going by the way of championships. That would belong to Bill Russell, who won 11 championships with the Boston Celtics in the ’50s and ’60s.

Russell does not have the most championships of any person tied to basketball, though. That honor belongs to Red Auerbach, who won nine championships coaching those Celtics teams with another seven as an executive.

Right behind him is former Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who won two NBA Championships as a player and 11 as a coach — six with the Bulls and five with the Lakers.

However, I would argue that the most successful person in basketball history is not Michael Jordan, not Bill Russell, not Red Auerbach and not Phil Jackson. All of which are legends and this is by no means downplaying what they accomplished in the league.

The most accomplished person in basketball history is former Los Angeles Lakers player and coach, Pat Riley.

If we are going based solely off the total number of championships then Pat Riley does not take the cake and does not even come close. He has 10 NBA Championships in his career (one as a player, five as a head coach, one as an assistant coach and three as an executive).

That ties him for the fifth-most all-time, putting him behind Russell, K.C Jones, Jackson and Auerbach. However, it is important to note for the sake of this argument, that Russell, Jones and Auerbach’s success all came together.

Auerbach racked up his rings total with the Larry Bird Celtics. What he accomplished should not be discounted, in the slightest, as he is arguably the greatest head coach of all-time. I just think it is important that Riley’s success came in different avenues across vastly different generations.

Riley has something that Auerbach doesn’t have: a championship as a player. Granted, Riley was never more than a depth guard, but he still played some kind of role on the 1972 Championship-winning Lakers, even if it was minimal.

Riley then transitioned to coaching. He was an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers for the 1980 NBA Championship and won another four championships as the head coach of the Showtime Lakers. So not only did he play alongside Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain and Gail Goodrich, but he coached Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy.

Riley then went on to coach the New York Knicks in the early 90s and would have had at least one more championship in his display case if it wasn’t for a guy by the name of Michael Jordan. The Knicks had their best regular season ever with Riley as the head coach and made it to the Eastern Conference Finals or NBA Finals every single season.

Riley is fifth all-time in head coaching wins (ahead of Auerbach and Jackson) and has the fourth-highest winning percentage of any coach with at least 1,000 games (trailing Jackson, Gregg Popovich and Auerbach).

After the Knicks, he transitioned to being the head coach and president of the Miami Heat, which is where his career winning percentage took a tumble. They had some successful years with some talented players, but for the most part, the 10-year-old franchise was struggling to succeed.

That changed with two things. First, Riley drafted the greatest Heat player of all-time in Dwayne Wade in the stacked 2003 NBA Draft class, and second, Riley made the trade for Shaquille O’Neal. Granted, Shaq did kind of fall in Riley’s lap, but nonetheless, it changed the tide of the franchise.

Riley won his fifth and final championship as a head coach in 2006 with Wade and Shaq before retiring from coaching two years later in 2008. Just two years after that, Riley pulled off arguably the greatest Avengers-like assembly of superstars in NBA history by adding LeBron James and Chris Bosh to the Heat.

While most NBA fans hated it, those Heat teams underperformed and should have won more than they did. The team should have had at least three championships and if LeBron decided to stick around for another four years, there is a good chance that they would have won at least two more championships.

We cannot add revisionist history titles to Riley’s mantle, but one more championship with the Knicks and three more with the Heat (both of which are not far-fetched) would have given him 14. Still second all-time, but it just shows how even 10 championships might not be a fair indication of how many he should have.

Because of his success at all three levels and his ability to succeed in different eras on different teams and in different roles (the one thing that Phil Jackson cannot say), Pat Riley has to be the most successful person in basketball history.

He played with the logo of the NBA and won a championship. He coached two of the greatest players of all-time on the Showtime Lakers. He led the Knicks to new heights, only to be thwarted by the greatest player of all-time. He capitalized on a tumultuous relationship on his old franchise and once again oversaw one of the greatest players of all-time on his team with LeBron James.

Pat Riley’s record speaks for itself. Because of his success with the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks and Miami Heat, he is the most successful person in basketball history.