The 5 best head coaches in Los Angeles Lakers history
By Jason Reed
The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the most decorated teams of all time with countless Hall of Fame players that have donned the purple and gold. The all-time greats are not just reserved for the court, though, as the team has had some excellent head coaches as well.
A franchise does not win 17 championships without having a long list of great head coaches. There certainly are some bad head coaches as well, but today, we are focusing on the good.
One thing should be noted before we jump into the list, though. We are only including coaches from the Los Angeles Lakers, not the Minneapolis Lakers. Sorry to John Kundla, who won 5 championships (one of which was still called the BAA Championship). He would have been on this list otherwise.
The 5 greatest head coaches in Los Angeles Lakers history:
5. Del Harris
Del Harris is the only non-champion on this list and while that does hurt his resume, his stint with the Los Angeles Lakers was still solid. Harris was good enough to pilot the team to a championship and if he would have stuck around he would have had at least one from the three-peat era.
Instead, he finished his Lakers career with a .659 winning percentage and one Coach of the Year Award. While Shaquille O’Neal eventually came along during the end of Harris’ tenure, Harris had to deal with a dry period in terms of starpower in Lakers’ history and was still able to make the Lakers a competitive playoff team.
That is far more than the recent stretch of head coaches could do from 2013-2018.
Harris ranks fifth in Los Angeles Lakers history in games coached and fourth in winning percentage with at least 100 games coached. Harris was never a head coach in the league again, instead serving as an assistant in the league up until 2010.
Harris does make it over Paul Westhead, who won a championship with the Lakers. While Westhead was successful, he and Magic Johnson had a contentious relationship that led to his firing. You can’t rank in the top five if you can’t even get along with your best player.