The legendary coach and former player, credited for introducing the “Nellie ball”, was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in 2012 for – at the time – holding the most wins as a head coach in NBA history.
Don Nelson, the second-winningest coach in NBA history, who won five championships as a player with the Boston Celtics, died on Sunday at the age of 86.
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His death was announced by the Golden State Warriors, one of the teams he coached post-retirement across two stints, the first from 1988-95 and then again from 2006-10.
Nelson is one of two coaches in NBA history to have at least 250 wins with three different franchises — Milwaukee, Dallas and Golden State — also serving as general manager for all three franchises.
He was a three-time coach of the year and made the playoffs 18 times in 31 seasons as head coach. He went to the conference finals on three different occasions with the Milwaukee Bucks and once with the Dallas Mavericks, never winning a title.
Nelson introduced what is now known as the point forward, an unorthodox basketball role where a forward—usually a small forward—takes on the playmaking and ball-handling duties of a point guard.
His up-tempo style of offence created a buzz, notably saying that the idea of shifting from the dominant big men of the 1970s to an offence focused on speed and the fast break came from his playing days under Celtics Hall of Fame coach Red Auerbach.
“The league really hadn’t seen an offence like the one we were running, and the results were undeniable,” Nelson wrote in 2016 in The Players’ Tribune.
The legendary coach and player played 11 of his 14 seasons in Boston and was on five Celtics championship teams under four different coaches. He became an assistant coach in Milwaukee after retiring as a player, then took over after coach Larry Costello resigned 18 games into the 1976-77 season.
Nelson coached the Bucks for 11 seasons starting in 1976 and won seven straight division titles. In Nelson’s second season, Milwaukee overcame a 29-point fourth quarter deficit to beat Atlanta 117-115 in regulation time.
At Golden State, Nelson’s “We Believe” Warriors led by Baron Davis upset Nowitzki and the top-seeded Mavericks in the first round of the 2007 playoffs in one of the biggest shockers in NBA history. In his final season as a coach, Nelson mentored rookie Stephen Curry in 2009-10 season.
“One of the big reasons I was drafted by the Warriors was because of Don Nelson. The story is he never liked rookies, but from Day 1 he challenged me and gave me an opportunity to be my best self on the court,” Curry said in a statement released by the Warriors.
“He taught me a lot during our one season together and I’ll never forget the night he became the winningest coach in NBA history in Minnesota. We were so happy for him. He had an immeasurable impact on the sport and will go down as one of the greatest minds in the history of the game.”
Nelson retired as the NBA’s career coaching wins leader with 1,335, just ahead of Lenny Wilkens’ 1,332. Nelson kept that top spot for nearly 12 years before close friend and now-retired San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich passed him in March 2022.
He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012. In 2025 he received the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the National Basketball Coaches Association.