Don Nelson, the man who turned basketball upside down, has died at 86
The NBA lost a total legend who looked at traditional centers and decided we needed point forwards instead.
Before Don Nelson, basketball was all about big guys standing near the hoop waiting for a pass. He thought that was boring, so he basically invented the point forward, turning the game into the high-speed chaos we watch today.
Nelson was a five-time champion as a player with the Boston Celtics, but his real genius was in the coaching chair. He was the guy who would look at a roster and start experimenting with lineups that made zero sense on paper, yet somehow won a mountain of games. He was the second-winningest coach in history for a long time, and he did it at three different franchises: the Milwaukee Bucks, Dallas Mavericks, and Golden State Warriors.
He didn't just coach; he dismantled the manual on how the sport was played. Steve Kerr hit the nail on the head when he said modern basketball is essentially built on Nellie's experiments.
It takes a special kind of person to look at a rigid professional system and decide that breaking the rules is actually the best way to win.
Source: Golden State Warriors
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