Initially I was going to say Phil Jackson, but as a life-long Bulls fan the tazer they install when you've been to over 10 playoff wins goes off if you say anything bad about Phil Jackson.
I know Red won like 10 titles or whatever as coach of the Celtics (fine, i'll look it up - 9 titles) but really, how good were alot of those other teams he was coaching against? There were only like 4 teams in the NBA in the 50's and 60's, he was bound to luck into a title every handful of years anyway.
And now that i'm looking things up, he coached 9 hall of fame players; some of them you may even have heard of. Guys like John Havlicek, Bob Cousey and Bill Russell to name just a few of them.
While I realize the same could be said for almost any great coach (except Phil Jackson - Phil Jackson is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life), Red had a much easier time considering there still weren't that many great players and he had most of them. Also, Red had the benefit of not being racist which was a huge competitive advantage over alot of other coaches/owners/people at the time (although he seems to have fielded the whitest teams in the 80's so maybe he was just trying to be counterintuitive).
He did smoke a cigar on the during games to basically piss of the other team. Thats pretty cool. But other than that, i'm still not sold on Red Auerbach.
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