Hall of Fame basketball coach Rick Adelman died Monday at 79, the NBA Coaches Association announced. He leaves behind a coaching career that produced 1,042 regular-season wins, the 10th most in league history, and two trips to the NBA Finals.
"Rick Adelman was one of the most respected and accomplished coaches in the history of the NBA," commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. "His leadership, innovation and genuine love for basketball left a lasting impression on generations of players and fellow coaches."
The record does not need much decoration; it already does the talking.
Playing Days and Early Coaching
Adelman was a seventh-round pick out of Loyola Marymount in 1968. He played seven season s for five NBA teams, averaging 7.7 points and 3.5 assists, mostly as a reserve. His two best season s came in 1971 and 1972 with the Portland Trail Blazers, a team he would later coach.
He retired at 28 to pursue coaching, beginning at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Or egon from 1977 to 1983. The nearby Blazers, the n coached by Jack Ramsay, brought him on as an assistant in 1983.
Portland and the Finals Years
Adelman became head coach of the Blazers in 1989. In six season s, he won over 65% of his games and led Portland to the 1990 and 1992 NBA Finals. Both times, his team lost — five games to Isiah Thomas and the Detroit Pistons in 1990, six games to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in 1992.
The record dipped over the next two years, and he was fired in 1994. He spent two years with the Golden State Warriors with out making the playoffs.
Sacramento and the Motion Offense
He found his stride in Sacramento, becoming the only Kings coach to reach the playoffs more than once since the team relocated. His motion offense, built around the passing of Chris Webber and Vlade Divac and the shooting of Peja Stojakovic, Doug Christie and Mike Bibby, became one of the most innovative attacks in the league.
The peak came in 2002, when the Kings won 61 games and pushed the two-time champion Los Angeles Lakers to seven games in the Western Conference Finals before losing in overtime. Webber suffered a serious knee injury in the 2003 playoffs, and the Kings never recaptured that form.
Houston, Minnesota and Legacy
After leaving Sacramento in 2006, Adelman coached the Houston Rockets to similar results. In 2009, the y pushed the eventual champion Lakers to seven games in the second round — with out Tracy McGrady for the entire series and Yao Ming for four games. He finished with three season s in Minnesota, none reaching the playoffs.
He retired with out a championship ring, though he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021. The offensive principles he developed continue influencing the modern game.
He is survived by his son David, head coach of the Denver Nuggets.