Who's The Greatest Coach In Portland Trail Blazers History?

In this series, we’ll take a look at the illustrious list of head coaches in each NBA franchise’s history. To make a case for ‘greatest coach,’ we’ll look at win-loss record, player development, and (most importantly) team accomplishments under that coach’s tutelage.

The Portland Trail Blazers have been many things to NBA fans. To die-hard supporters, they are a sentimental franchise with a championship legacy. To other students of the game, they’ve been a renegade squad with the alias “Jail Blazers,” as well as the last team coached by Chauncey Billups before getting arrested on federal charges.

What everyone can agree on is the impressive list of tacticians who’ve been at the helm of the team for the past five and a half decades. The fans of Portland have been among the loudest spectators in terms of live crowds, and if it weren’t for the impeccable head coaches who’ve steered the Blazers, those fans might have leaned towards silence.

The pinnacle of the Trail Blazers’ history came in 1977, when they won their first-ever NBA championship. Calling the shots for the team was Jack Ramsay, a World War II veteran who obtained a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Jack showcased the range of his teaching skills as he steered pupils like Maurice Lucas and Bill Walton to the highest honor in the league.

After Ramsay, the closest that the Blazers got to a repeat performance was their two Finals appearances in the early 90s. During this era, the mastermind on the bench was Rick Adelman. Players like Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter thrived under Adelman’s leadership as they took on Isiah Thomas’ Pistons and Michael Jordan’s Bulls in two separate championship series.

For nearly two decades, the Blazers found themselves staring at a second-round ceiling. That changed in 2019, when Terry Stotts led the team back to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2000. The fearsome backcourt duo of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum was Stotts’ primary weapon against a Warriors squad seeking a three-peat.

No Blazers head coach has managed to live up to the accomplishments of Dr. Ramsay in both the regular season and the postseason. As the only coach to win a championship for the team, Dr. Ramsay gets the nod as the greatest Blazers coach ever.