Who has won the most NBA games?

“Who has won the most NBA games?” When I first asked it to myself, I thought it was a simple question.

It is, after all, fairly simple to find out who has played in the most NBA victories as a player. A few beeps and boops into Basketball-Reference’s Play Index and, boom, the answer is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 1,228, with Tim Duncan a semi-distant second place.

Finding out which coach has won the most games is even easier: Basketball-Reference already has a page for that. Don Nelson has won the most regular season games, edging out Lenny Wilkens by a scant three victories, 1,335 to 1,332. But for this post, I only want to know about the regular season and playoffs combined. Well, Wilkens has a two-win advantage over Nelson there, 1,412 to 1,410.

This is close but not nearly close enough to answering my question, which, more precisely stated, is: “Who has had direct strategic input in the most NBA victories?” Obviously this includes players and coaches, but it also includes assistant coaches, scouts and executives. Incredibly, from here on out finding an answer to my question is murky to the point of being impossible. As much as I would love for the following to be a declarative, historical list, the truth is that the chart of all-time leaders is going to look a lot different depending on who puts it together.

A thorny group of sub-questions immediately pops up. For example: should a player who is injured and on the bench for his team’s victory get credit for the win? Even though they may be providing crucial mentorship for their back-up, I decided no. Should one of the game’s increasingly nebulous “consultants” get credit for victories? Even though they may be somewhat removed from the every-day grind of meetings and analysis, I decided yes. What about team owners? I decided that only members of basketball operations should get credit for victories, excluding an icon like Jerry Buss. And even still, in some cases it is frustratingly vague to figure out what roles in the past — when an NBA team was still something of a small business — could be counted as “basketball operations” or not.

My cutoff was 2,000 victories or somebody who was rapidly approaching 2,000 victories. This is a truly incredible amount of victories. About half of the NBA teams — including institutions like the Jazz and Cavaliers, who are well into their 40s — have yet to win 2,000 games in their entire history.

Winning 2,000 NBA games means, by definition, that you are not only an NBA lifer but you have also successfully navigated the passage of umpteen basketball generations. You mastered the game without a 3-point line; you spent your life in basketball back when it was on the tape-delayed fringe of culture. And you have mastered today’s game in all its pace-and-space, luxury-boxed, $100-million-cap glory.

Truly mastering each new basketball generation is important here. Wilkens, despite coaching for more NBA seasons than anybody in history (32), spent many of those years hovering somewhere near .500, and therefore does not crack 2,000. Even though Elgin Baylor started his career getting drafted by the Minneapolis Lakers and ended it by drafting DeAndre Jordan, that mere geologic longevity was not enough. All those years with Sterling’s lackluster Clippers meant Baylor also fell short of 2,000.

That Wilkens and Baylor both fell short is I believe something of a coincidence, and that coincidence means that the following list is made entirely of white guys. I believe that this list is accurate, but I can’t guarantee it. I feel like a legendarily crusty ol’ scout or a lifelong assistant coach slipped through the cracks here. Please don’t hesitate to tell me what name(s) I’m missing on Twitter.

As best as I can assemble it, here is the list of all-time winners:

6. Jerry Colangelo: 1,973 wins

Scout + Various / Bulls / 1966-1968: 63
GM + Coach / Suns / 1968-1995: 1,291
Executive + Owner / Suns / 1995-2007: 590
Executive + Consultant / 76ers / 2015-present: 29

After the elder Colangelo handed over the GM reigns to his son Bryan in 1995, it’s hard to tell what Jerry’s role was with the Suns for the next 12 years. Jerry did, after all, help build the Arizona Diamondbacks from MLB expansion team to World Series winner during that span, which had to be taking up at least some of his time.

Even though the ring-less Suns are not exactly the first team you’d think of when it comes to stacking up wins, Phoenix had the fifth-best winning percentage of any NBA team during Colangelo’s 27-year tenure as GM. He is the only man in this list without a ring — a fate that only Joel Embiid can save him from now.

5. Mitch Kupchak: 2,058 wins

Player / Bullets / Lakers / 1976-1986: 365
Assistant GM / Lakers / 1986-2000: 831
GM / Lakers / 2000-2017: 862

This was the biggest surprise for me on this list. After all, Kupchak just got fired this spring after failing to bring the Lakers into today’s modern basketball age. Oh, and there’s the fact that he got fired in the first place, which actually rarely happens to decision-makers with so many rings on their fingers. Still, there has rarely been a wiser free-agency decision than the one Kupchak made to come aboard with the Lakers in 1981: he was in Los Angeles for an incredible nine championships.

4. Don Nelson: 2,130 wins

Player / Chicago Zephyrs / Lakers / Celtics / 1962-1976: 720
Coach + GM / Bucks / Warriors / Knicks / Mavericks / 1976-2010: 1,410

Even though he was so close to Wilkens in the coaching numbers, Nelson holds a huge overall advantage over Lenny for two reasons. One, Wilkens actually spent a number of years as a player-coach, meaning that Nelson actually spent more overall seasons in the NBA (45) than Wilkens did (40). Also, while Wilkens was an All-Star for the playoff regular St. Louis Hawks, Nelson picked up five rings and so many more wins as a long-tenured Celtics bench player behind Bill Russell and then John Havlicek. He is the only person on this list who never worked exclusively in a front office.

3. Pat Riley: 2,441 wins

Player / San Diego Rockets / Lakers / Suns / 1967-1976 : 287
Assistant Coach / Lakers / 1979-1981: 127
Coach / Lakers / Knicks /1981-1995: 900
Coach + Executive / Heat / 1995-present: 1,127

Even though Riley has been with the Heat for over 20 years now, it can feel like only five of those years were really notable — the Shaquille O’Neal and then the LeBron James mini-eras. But only the Spurs and the Lakers have better winning percentages than Miami since Riley took the reigns in South Beach. The feat is especially impressive considering that Riley had no previous experience as an executive. As we’ve just seen with Phil Jackson, Riley’s historic success as a coach did not guarantee that things would go well when he became a decision-maker.

2. Jerry West: 2,721 wins

Player / Lakers / 1960-1974: 681
Coach / Lakers / 1976-1979: 153
Scout / Lakers / 1979-1982: 196
GM / Lakers / 1982-2000: 1,112
GM / Grizzlies / 2002-2007: 194
Consultant / Warriors / 2011-2017: 384
Consultant / Clippers / 2017-present: 1

West’s jump from the Warriors to the Clippers is what first got me wondering about the all-time winners. West was Bill Russell’s biggest rival and it still feels like his movement from team to team is powerful enough to shift the underlying tectonic plates of the league. When West joined the Warriors in 2011 it felt random — only, in retrospect, to realize that West almost immediately got to work laying the foundations of a dynasty. What’s so incredible about West’s career is that he has tallied this many wins while also leaving so many others on the table, like the Kobe-Shaq three-peat, and also the huge number of wins that the Warriors are going to scoop up this year and in the years to come.

I’m convinced that West has done his part to deserve these wins as a consultant because there are not one, but two videos on YouTube of him working with Harrison Barnes on mechanics in an otherwise empty gym.

1. Red Auerbach: 2,997 wins

Coach / Tri-Cities Blackhawks / 1949-1950: 29
Coach / Celtics / 1950-1966: 885
GM / Celtics / 1966-1984: 1,059
Executive / Celtics /1984-2006: 1,024

Unfortunately, Auerbach’s résumé is the murkiest of all: it’s the last 15 or so years as an executive, in various roles, that are really the question here. To quote from Auerbach’s Wikipedia page: “In an interview, Auerbach confessed that he lost interest in big-time managing in the early 1990s, preferring to stay in the background and concentrating on his pastimes, racquetball and his beloved cigar-smoking.” Auerbach is still in this elite company even without that decade-plus of not-quite-exclusive focus on the basketball team. Those years are the difference between him being further down on the list or vaulting to No. 1.

Even though Auerbach’s 16 rings is a lock for basketball’s very most unbeatable record, I can’t help but walk away feeling ultimately more impressed with West’s many accomplishments. Auerbach was continuously employed for the first 57 years of the NBA — West didn’t appear as a rookie until Auerbach had a full decade of coaching under his belt. When you factor that West has also taken quite a few years off in this century — plus West has taken leaps into three entirely new and very risky scenarios in Memphis, Golden State and now Los Angeles — it’s clear that West has maintained an elite winning percentage for many more of his years as a senior advisor.

Next: Which players cost themselves the most money in free agency?

It’s going to take years of jockeying to find out which Western team can ultimately dethrone the ever-mighty Warriors. With their mix of established veterans and sudden group of intriguing early-20s prospects, the Clippers are as good a bet as any to ultimately get the job done. And now here’s another reason to keep a close eye on the Clippers: another five or six seasons of playoff-caliber basketball and West would be the first-ever person with 3,000 NBA victories to his name.

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