Don Nelson, NBA’s Second-Winningest Coach and Hall of Famer, Dies at 86

Don Nelson, the second-winningest coach in NBA history and a five-time NBA champion as a player with the Boston Celtics, died Sunday at age 86, his family confirmed. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer passed peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones, capping a basketball life that spanned more than five decades as both player and coach.

Nelson’s family said he “peacefully went to be with the Lord, surrounded by his loving family” after a difficult final stretch that reportedly included a stroke suffered three weeks earlier and a subsequent move into hospice care. Before his coaching legacy, Nelson was a key contributor on Celtics championship teams in the 1960s and 1970s, and his No. 19 was retired by Boston in 1978. He went on to redefine how the game was coached, spending 31 seasons on NBA sidelines with the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors — in two separate stints — the New York Knicks and the Dallas Mavericks.

A Coaching Résumé Few Will Ever Match

Nelson finished his career with a regular-season record of 1,335-1,063, a mark that stood as the all-time NBA wins record until Gregg Popovich passed him in March 2022. He remains second on that list, along with a place among only three coaches — alongside Popovich and Pat Riley — to win NBA Coach of the Year three times, earning the honor in 1983, 1985 and 1992. Nelson and Lenny Wilkens are also the only coaches in league history to record 300-plus wins with three different franchises, piling up 540 with Milwaukee, 422 with Golden State and 339 with Dallas. He led teams to the playoffs 18 times and captured eight division titles, and in 2025 he received the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award for his decades of influence on the sport.

What set Nelson apart wasn’t just the win total — it was the way he got there. Nicknamed “Nellie,” he pioneered small-ball, positionless lineups and unconventional rotations decades before “pace and space” became a league-wide buzzword. Much of what fans now consider standard NBA strategy traces directly back to concepts Nelson experimented with first, often to the bewilderment of more traditional coaches around the league.

Tributes Pour In From Nowitzki, Curry and Doncic

The basketball world moved quickly to honor Nelson on Sunday. Dirk Nowitzki, whom Nelson drafted and mentored in Dallas, posted an emotional message crediting the coach with shaping his entire career. “Nellie… You didn’t just draft me. You believed in me. You saw things in my game before I ever realized I could do them,” Nowitzki wrote. “I don’t think my career could have turned out how it did without you being my first coach and giving me the freedom to play my game. I can only say THANK YOU. For everything. RIP legend.”

Stephen Curry, whom Nelson coached during his rookie season in Golden State, echoed that sentiment in a statement released through the Warriors. “One of the big reasons I was drafted by the Warriors was because of Don Nelson,” Curry said. “The story is he never liked rookies, but from Day 1 he challenged me and gave me an opportunity to be my best self on the court.” Curry also posted on his Instagram Story, calling Nelson “one of the greatest minds in the game” and adding that “NellyBall was a real thing.” Luka Doncic, who inherited Nowitzki’s Dallas legacy decades later, called it “a sad day for basketball,” writing that he had “so much respect for him and everything he did for the game, especially the way he believed in international players.”

A Legacy That Reshaped the Modern Game

The Warriors, Mavericks and Knicks all issued statements mourning Nelson, with Golden State calling him “a true innovator whose influence on the game of basketball is still felt today,” noting that he “consistently challenged conventional thinking, experimented with different lineups and styles of play and saw possibilities in the game that others often did not.” The Knicks organization said it was “saddened to hear of the passing of Basketball Hall of Famer and former Knicks head coach,” extending condolences to his family.

Nelson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012, cementing a legacy built on both sides of the ball — five championship rings as a Celtics role player and a coaching tree that stretched across four franchises and multiple eras of the league. As tributes continue to roll in from around the NBA, from front offices to the players whose careers he helped launch, Nelson’s fingerprints on how basketball is played today remain as visible as ever, long after “Nellie” first started tearing up the coaching rulebook in Milwaukee back in 1976.