Listening to the HOF speeches as a Warriors fan sent me down a Don Nelson rabbit hole and there is so much to dig into and appreciate. Both Pop and Dirk mentioned him in their speeches, as Nellie took Pop on as an assistant coach in 1992 after Pop had been fired by the Spurs the first time, and of course, Nellie drafted both Dirk and Steve Nash and coached them. If you’re wondering why Nellie couldn’t make the induction, it turns out he is 83, lives on Maui, and simply does not travel anymore. He talks about Pop and Dirk both going into the HOF in this recent [interview](https://www.sportskeeda.com/basketball/news-exclusive-don-nelson-gives-heartfelt-praise-dirk-nowitzki-gregg-popovich-ahead-2023-basketball-hall-fame-induction) though.
Some things I didn’t know about Nellie beforehand. He played with Elgin Baylor and Jerry West on the Lakers, and then he was basically the sixth-man on the late-dynasty Celtics (Russell/Havlicek/Auerbach/Heinsohn), was a 5-time NBA champion and his number 19 is retired by the Celtics. He shot [one-handed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBP-FAjxzNQ) free throws. He coached the Dream Team II to the 1994 FIBA championship. He was a 3 time coach of the year, two of those coaching the 80s Bucks in his first job.
The most impressive (and relevant) aspect of course is Nellie’s coaching creativity and this 2010 Jonathan Tjarks (RIP) [article](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/546549-great-nba-what-if-line-ups-a-tribute-to-don-nelson) (sorry for the broken formatting) goes into some detail. Of course, Nellie’s team never made the Finals. But aspects of his coaching have permeated the league. In particular, his strategies on how to defeat a team with more talented and taller players, honed against Hakeem, Ewing, Shaq, and Duncan, are still seen in the NBA and the Warriors today. Now that players are actually being trained from an early age in Nellie-ball-like systems, his strategies have been shown to be able to dominate the game.
Nellie decided that you do not counter a generational big man by trying to match up with a worse big man, but rather, to have ANY chance of winning, you have to play a different type of game that plays to your strengths and their weaknesses. This means inventing strategies like Hack-a-Shaq to exploit a big center’s weaknesses. It means playing 3-guard lineups (which we Warriors fans have been moaning about this whole season), it means your forward being the biggest player on the floor, both of which he did with the RunTMC, Mavs, and We Believe teams. It means inventing the “point-forward” role with Bucks in the 80s which has been used by various teams with various star players (Bird, old Magic, Pippen, Grant Hill) over the years, but has truly come to full fruition now with Lebron and Luka and the teams constructed around them. It means getting a sniper forward like Dirk and playing him at center to drag centers out of the paint, which quickly caught on successfully with Pau and Bosh, and manifests today where even your centers hit 3’s (Lopez, Horford, KAT, Jokic).
In fact, on the Warriors we see the ultimate combination of these strategies with Draymond at center dragging centers out of the paint and then running PnR with Steph, forcing either the center to guard a Steph shot on the perimeter or to catch up with Steph/Draymond driving past the center. This means you now longer need that special sniper forward and can use a forward who can actually play defense, which was always a weakness of the strategy. He actually tried to make Chris Webber play center too but sadly was too early for his time and alienated him so much in the process that it destroyed the mid-90s Warriors.
When I look through this list of Nellie innovations, and hearing Pop and Dirk appreciate him in their speeches, it made me appreciate how much Nellie’s strategies changed the game. We mostly give credit to D’Antoni, Steph, and Lebron for transforming the game, but Nellie really laid the foundation for how the modern NBA is played.
by emestoo
