The Los Angeles Lakers organization is one of the most historic franchises in NBA history; the team has won 16 championships, which is second behind only the Boston Celtics.
The Lakers have had the luxury of having some of the best players in the history of the NBA like Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O Neal, Kobe Bryant, the list goes on and on.
But championships aren’t just won with great players. It also takes an impressive coach to get to this level of success.
Luckily for the Lakers, the coaching history has helped the team earn their star-studded reputation.
Three different Lakers head coaches have been awarded NBA Coach of the Year, and the others found another way to earn their spot on the list of best Lakers coaches. Find out who they are below as we rank the top six head coaches in Los Angeles Lakers history.
1. Phil Jackson
On the top of the best Lakers coaches list sits Phil Jackson, and with good reason.
Jackson is not only considered the greatest coach in Lakers history, but possibly the greatest coach in NBA history. Jackson has won an NBA record 11 championships as a head coach, with five of them coming with the Lakers.
Jackson had two different coaching stints with the Lakers and made seven finals appearances in 11 seasons. He is the all-time winningest Lakers coach in terms of championships, finals appearances, wins (610) and playoff wins (181).
Many people are critical of Jackson’s recent stint with the New York Knicks as an executive, but there is no denying the success he had as head coach of the Lakers, leading them to three straight championships from 2000-02 and two more in 2009 and 2010.
2. Pat Riley
Pat Riley was an assistant coach for the Lakers from 1979-81 before taking over as the head coach where he remained until 1990.
Before Jackson came along Riley was unquestionably the greatest coach in Lakers history as he led them to seven finals appearances and four championships in 10 years.
He won 73 percent of the games he coached for the Lakers, which is a higher winning percentage than Jackson and he is responsible for bringing together the Showtime Lakers that took the NBA by storm in the 1980s.
Riley was one of three Lakers head coaches to win NBA Coach of the Year, as he took home the award in his final season with the organization in 1990.
3. Bill Sharman
Bill Sharman served as the Lakers head coach from 1971-76 and coached the Lakers to their first championship after moving to Los Angeles in 1972.
That season they won an NBA-record 33 consecutive games and Sharman took home his only Coach of the Year award.
Sharman is one of three Lakers coaches to be enshrined in the Baketball Hall of Fame and in his tenure with the Lakers he had a 246-164 record.
4. Frank Vogel:
Frank Vogel took over the Lakers in 2019 when they were in a state of turmoil and immediately brought stability to the organization, guiding them through a ton of adversity such as the death of Kobe Bryant, a crazy China trip and a global pandemic to win a championship in his first season in the Orlando bubble.
In Vogel’s second season, he managed to maintain the top-ranked defense in the league despite a number of key players missing significant time due to injuries. Vogel’s third season in 2021-22 did not go as planned with the Lakers missing the postseason, which led to his firing.
In three seasons with the team though, Vogel won a championship, made two postseason appearances and finished with a 127-99 record.
5. Paul Westhead:
Many people may not know this but it was Paul Westhead, not Pat Riley, that won the first Lakers championship with Magic Johnson as the team’s point guard in 1980.
Westhead only coached the Lakers for a little more than two seasons, but in those two years he went 114-50. It is rumored that his disputes with Johnson led to owner Jerry Buss replacing him with Riley, so it will never be known how much success Westhead could’ve had if he continued coaching the Lakers throughout the 1980s.
6. Del Harris:
Del Harris is the only Lakers coach to make the list that didn’t win a championship, but he still had a very successful tenure in Los Angeles.
Along with Riley and Sharman, Harris is the only other Lakers head coach to win Coach of the Year when he led the Lakers to a 48-34 record in 1994-95.
In his four full seasons with Los Angeles the Lakers won more each successive season as after winning 48 games in 1994-95 they won 53 the following season and then 56 and 61 the next two. Harris was replaced by Jackson in the late 1990s and they went on to win three championships with the core that Harris developed.