LA Sports: Seven greatest coaches of the 2010 decade

The LA Sports scene was a wild one this decade and in it, there have been some great coaches leading their respective teams to victory.

The 2010’s brought a lot of coaches through the LA sports landscape. When the millennium started it was still in vogue to let successful coaches ride the ups and downs of their tenures, by 2010 that was less true.

Through this decade there were many coaching changes nobody who started 2010 with a team is still coaching the team now today at the end of 2019. Very few teams had the patience to watch teams falter and more and more and that meant even championship coaches were shown the door.

In the decade an all-time great added one more title to his legacy, one master ruled a galaxy of stars, and a franchise finally found someone to push them to championship heights.

These are the top seven coaches of the decade:

Honorable Mention: Phil Jackson, 2009-2011, 114-50

NBA Championships: 1

When the decade began not only was Phil Jackson the king of coaches in the NBA but his championship resume made him the king of coaches in the four major sports of North America. Jackson deserves mention even though he only coached two seasons in the decade, he is one of two coaches to win a title among the “Big Four,” and he did something no Los Angeles Lakers coach had ever done.

Jackson and the Lakers won the 2010 NBA Finals defeating their arch-rivals the Boson Celtics in seven games to win back to back titles. It was the first time the Lakers beat the Celtics in a seventh game, previously losing four straight game sevens in their FInals battles.

By virtue of winning the title Jackson’s 11th in the NBA, he extended his record for championships no other coach in the “Big Four” has won double digits. Unfortunately, it was the peak for Jackson as the next season the Lakers were swept out of the playoffs by the Dallas Mavericks and Jackson’s career was over.