Where does Scotty Bowman rank among coaches in professional sports?

[Crosby2010]

Is it more or less a given that Bowman is the greatest coach in NHL history? I don't think it has to be said to be honest. No one has had his success, longevity, championships or aura that he does. Coaching a team in the late 1960s and going to Cup finals and then calling it a day in 2002 after skating away with his 9th Stanley Cup win is a lot of range.

But how do you think he does among the coaches/managers in the other sports? Basketball, Football, Baseball.

I think we can narrow it down. In the NBA you have Phil Jackson and Red Auerbach. 11 championships for Jackson and 9 for Auerbach, including 8 in a row. Take it anyway you want, but those guys are on the list. No one else is there in NBA history. Baseball there are plenty with lots of longevity. Connie Mack comes to mind, John McGraw. Mack was managing the Athletics for half a century and while he did win World Series, he also had plenty of 100+ loss seasons. He does have a lot of bad stuff in between at times. Which I suppose is a given over 50 years, but still, can you put him #1 in baseball? McGraw's teams took a while to finally win and the question is did they do it enough? Casey Stengel does not have a good record outside of the Yankees dynasty from 1949 to 1960 when he coached. Joe Torre is sort of the same way, just has those great Yankees years and lots of other seasons with other teams but nothing to write home about. So for me it comes down to Joe McCarthy. Sure he had Gehrig and Ruth and them Gehrig and DiMaggio and then the DiMaggio-led teams after that, but he still never had a losing season in his career. Obviously there are the 7 World Series wins with the Yankees, but he also took the Cubs to the World Series and at the end of his career managed some very good Red Sox teams including the 1949 team that was oh so close.

That leaves Football. To me you have George Halas, Paul Brown and Bill Belichick. Don Shula lost too many championship games for my liking and so did Tom Landry while we're at it. I know I am missing Vince Lombardi, but if he doesn't die at 57 years old maybe we can see what he does outside of Green Bay. There just isn't quite the longevity with Lombardi. Pound for pound he is probably the best NFL coach ever, but it was shorter lived than others. Brown had some losing seasons at the end, it seemed Halas normally had great teams and he had some championships to boot. Belichick right now is getting pistol whipped but I don't care, he was an all-time great coach, maybe the best.

So if you were to rank Bowman, where does he rank among the others: Jackson, Auerbach, Halas, Brown, Belichick, Lombardi (okay I will put him in there why not, eh?), McCarthy, Mack

Click to read more...

 

[Serge Menard]

Hi! He is way up there in the ranking, He beats them all, no contest. He even made it the Stanley Cup twice as coach of an expansion team, the St-Louis Blues. The expansion teams back then were not the Golden Knights and the Krakens, They were not helped by the league per se, so to do it twice with the Blues, there is no comparison, and He did win the Stanley Cup in every decade He coached in, in the 70s and 80s and 90.s, so there is no coach in all sports that can compare to Mr Bowman, yes He was lucky a bit to have good teams, but He has to coach them. So as coach and a Hockey Man and holographic memory and intelligence and class, He is alone in that sphere of accomplishments. As a General Manager, He struggled a little bit, but He was good and this is Him who built the superb Penguins team in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was a genius really, and He is still very sharp at age 91 and still have His holographic memory. He is one of a kind. Thanks for reading and take good care and be safe and have a nice day.

 

[MadLuke]

He even made it the Stanley Cup twice as coach of an expansion team, the St-Louis Blues.

The flyers-Kings-North Stars-Penguins teams they did beat to reach those finals were all expansion teams as well too no ?

One general comments about those supercoach teams coach, obviously it does help a lot but we can think of a lot of case of those teams never working in part because of very coachable issues, so you can always have some merit to make them work.

 

[VanIslander]

Scotty Bowman is more than a Bill Belichick.

 

[MVP of West Hollywd]

Jackson is my pick as coaches like Popovich, Belichick, Bowman, etc. at least had the benefit of elite culture setters like Duncan, Brady, Russell, etc. while Jackson's teams are by far the most flammable mentally if they didn't have the Zen Master. MJ for his greatness was an a hole and clearly him and Pippen have issues by their modern day relationship, Phil had to go in and get MJ to give up the ball more in the triangle. Then later they added fking Rodman. Shaq and Kobe relationship was built to self destruct and on the Kobe/Pau teams he coached some timebombs like Odom, Bynum and Artest, in addition to Kobe being complicated himself. He managed to keep these teams together to win a three peat 3 times without it falling apart by the third year, and then repeat title with later Lakers teams. Jackson also literally doesn't lose when he has the best team. I think he is undefeated when his team leads 1-0 in a series and his only losses with home court advantage are 2004 Finals against Pistons (who would've had HCA if they had Sheed the whole year) and the last one in 2011 against Mavericks.

Auerbach has the greatest dynasty however when Russell took over as player coach they won the last 2 without him so it takes a little bit of the shine off it, and even before taking over as player coach it sounds like Russell had a massive impact on his team's strategy and directing teammates etc

An underrated coach all time is Alex Hannum who coached both teams to beat Russell's Celtics in 58 Hawks (helped by Russell injury) and 67 Sixers and coached Wilt in his prime in two different teams in that and the Warriors earlier and got arguably his 3 best seasons of all time out of him, on 64 Warriors it was the first time Wilt played a team game instead of stat padding and he led a no talent squad to finals, and then huge seasons in 67 and 68. Hannum also went on to an ABA title. Ultimately coaches are impacted by their situation and people with more rings like Riley and Popovich were fortunate to have born leaders like Magic and Duncan along with stacked teams, therefore I think Hannum has a case for top 3 or 4 all time for the accomplishment of being the Wilt Whisperer where others failed miserably and having to coach in an era against a team that won 11 rings in 13 years.

 

[MadLuke]

One aspect here, isn,t coaching in football in a almost different category-level of importance than other sport, other coach in other sports would be graded on a curve to compete with them.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Hi! He is way up there in the ranking, He beats them all, no contest. He even made it the Stanley Cup twice as coach of an expansion team, the St-Louis Blues. The expansion teams back then were not the Golden Knights and the Krakens, They were not helped by the league per se, so to do it twice with the Blues, there is no comparison, and He did win the Stanley Cup in every decade He coached in, in the 70s and 80s and 90.s, so there is no coach in all sports that can compare to Mr Bowman, yes He was lucky a bit to have good teams, but He has to coach them. So as coach and a Hockey Man and holographic memory and intelligence and class, He is alone in that sphere of accomplishments. As a General Manager, He struggled a little bit, but He was good and this is Him who built the superb Penguins team in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was a genius really, and He is still very sharp at age 91 and still have His holographic memory. He is one of a kind. Thanks for reading and take good care and be safe and have a nice day.

His STL finals have the caveat of the conferences then were split between expansion teams and existing teams.

I have Auerbach at the top because he also built those teams. He was the GM and built 16 title winning teams in Boston over a 30 year span (he drafted Bird, traded for McHale and Parrish, traded for DJ, etc)