Phil Jackson headlines NBA's best 15 coaches of all-time originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
The NBA released the list of its 15 greatest coaches of all-time Tuesday night, and it was dotted with Chicago Bulls ties.
Start with Phil Jackson, who accrued six championships and 656 wins between the regular season (545) and playoffs (111) in his nine seasons with the Bulls.
Those victories came with a sterling .737 win percentage, and adding in his 11 Lakers seasons gives the Zen Master the most playoff victories (229), championships (11) and highest regular-season win percentage (0.704) in NBA history.
Then, there's Jerry Sloan, who starred for the Bulls as a player and later coached the team for parts of three seasons between 1979 and 1982. He is one of only four players to have his jersey retired in the United Center rafters.
Sloan's inclusion in this pantheon, though, is due to his success over 23 seasons with the Utah Jazz. He finished his illustrious coaching career with 1,221 regular-season wins (fourth all-time), 98 playoff victories (sixth) and two Western Conference championships — both of which precluded NBA Finals losses to the Bulls in 1997 and 1998.
Steve Kerr, a key cog in the Bulls' second three-peat, also made the list for his work with the Golden State Warriors during their dynasty run. Kerr's 417-184 regular-season record gives him the third-highest win percentage (0.694) of all-time, and he's already creeping toward the top 10 in playoff wins, with 77 in eight years.
Doc Rivers, a Chicago native and NBA champion with the Celtics in 2008, also made the cut.
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