![\"Don](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-51990002.jpg\")
Don Nelson, a Hall of Fame coach who spent one season at the helm for the Knicks, has died. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\nDon Nelson, the Hall of Famer who won five championships as a player before a decades-long coaching career that included a brief stint with the Knicks, died Sunday, his family said in a statement.<\/p>\n
He was 86 years old. A cause of death wasn\u2019t revealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Sunday morning our beloved husband, dad, grandfather and great-grandfather Don Nelson peacefully went to be with the Lord, surrounded by his loving family,\u201d Nelson\u2019s family said in a statement, according to NBA reporter Marc Stein. \u201cThroughout his last week, friends and family encircled him with love, sharing the blessing of his friendship and revisiting treasured memories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before his second career as a coach, where he notably helped jumpstart the careers of Dirk Nowitzki and Steph Curry, the 6-foot-6 Nelson starred for the Celtics. He won five titles in Boston while averaging 10.3 points and 4.9 rebounds across a 14-year playing career that also included stints with the Chicago Zephyrs \u2014 who drafted him in the third round of the 1962 draft out of Iowa \u2014 and the Lakers.<\/p>\n
Don Nelson, a Hall of Fame coach who spent one season at the helm for the Knicks, has died. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Nelson \u2014 whose coaching career began as an assistant with the Bucks in 1976 and stretched until his final season as head coach of the Warriors in 2009-10 \u2014 won 1,335 games as a head coach, which sits as the second-most in NBA history behind former Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. He earned the league\u2019s Coach of the Year honor three times. He invented \u201cNellie Ball,\u201d which embraced a smaller lineup based on speed, and made it acceptable to use a point-forward. \u201cMost of all I wanted to have all my best players on the court at the same time \u2014 regardless of position,\u201d Nelson wrote in an article in The Players\u2019 Tribune in 2016.<\/p>\n
That vision all started to take shape after landing his first chance as head coach during that first season in Milwaukee, when Larry Costello resigned in November 1976 after a 3-15 start.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expected to be an assistant at least two years, maybe longer, before trying for a head coaching job,\u201d Nelson, just 36 years old at the time, said, according to the New York Times. \u201cI don\u2019t have the most experience in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Nelson was never an assistant again. He served as the Bucks\u2019 head coach until 1988, winning Coach of the Year twice \u2014 in 1983 and 1985 \u2014 and guiding Milwaukee to at least 50 wins across seven consecutive seasons. Then, after a season away from the sport, Nelson took over the Warriors for the 1988-89 campaign, staying in the Bay Area until his resignation in February 1995 with a 14-31 record. He earned his third and final Coach of the Year nod in 1992.<\/p>\n
The Knicks hired him as their Pat Riley successor for the 1995-96 season, but Nelson was fired after just 59 games. He latched on with the Mavericks in 1997-98, though, and slowly started to restore their franchise. Dallas picked Nowitzki at No. 9 overall in the 1998 draft, and by the end of the 2000-01 campaign, the Mavericks were back in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Nelson\u2019s final stint as a coach doubled as a reunion, as he took over a Warriors team that hadn\u2019t cracked the postseason since his resignation. Golden State, as the No. 8 seed, upset the Mavericks in the first round of Nelson\u2019s first season. And while they didn\u2019t make the playoffs again before his exit in September 2010, he coached Curry during his rookie campaign \u2014 with Curry acknowledging in a statement Sunday that \u201cone of the big reasons I was drafted by the Warriors\u201d was because of Nelson.<\/p>\n
![\"Don](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-145404092.jpg\")
Don Nelson won five NBA championships as a player with the Celtics. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story is he never liked rookies,\u201d Curry said in a statement, \u201cbut from Day 1 he challenged me and gave me an opportunity to be my best self on the court. \u2026 He had an immeasurable impact on the sport and will go down as one of the greatest minds in the history of the game. He\u2019s a true icon and will be missed by the countless number of people he touched, including myself, during a legendary career.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Warriors, in a statement, described Nelson \u2014 who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012 \u2014 as \u201ca true basketball visionary who saw the game differently and was never afraid to challenge conventional thinking.\u201d Chris Mullin, part of the \u201cRun TMC\u201d Golden State teams with Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond, said Nelson \u201cwas more than a coach to me.\u201d Richmond said, in part, that Nelson \u201cmade the game fun.\u201d Nowitzki credited Nelson with seeing \u201cthings in my game before I ever realized I could do them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNellie was ahead of his time,\u201d Hardaway said in a statement, \u201cand there was nobody else like him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don Nelson, the Hall of Famer who won five championships as a player before a decades-long coaching career…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9127,9139,9140,1268,21,9,11,1104,10,319],"class_list":["post-317388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-boston-celtics","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-milwaukee-bucks","tag-nba","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-new-york-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}