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Quick. Name the top 15 coaches of all-time in the NBA. You probably thought of Red Auerbach and Pat Riley and Larry Brown and Phil Jackson and Jerry Sloan and Jack Ramsay.
If you mentioned Rick Adelman, you're in the minority.
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| Rick Adelman's leadership is helping the Rockets fly up the charts. (Getty Images) |
Adelman ranks 13th on the NBA career regular-season victories list with 795 in his 17 years as a head coach, trailing only Don Nelson, Riley, Jackson, Sloan and George Karl among active coaches. Adelman is 10th in winning percentage (.613) and ranks 11th in playoff triumphs (70) after twice taking Portland to the NBA Finals. If not for a few lamentable referees' calls in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, he'd have had his Sacramento Kings in the NBA Finals in 2002, too.
Except for his two forgettable seasons with Golden State, Adelman's teams have made the postseason every year.
In his first season with Houston, Adelman, 61, has put together one of the most astounding runs in NBA history. The Rockets (43-20) take a 19-game win streak into Wednesday's game at Atlanta -- tied for the third-longest streak in league history.
Only the Lakers' legendary 33-game run (1971-72) and the Milwaukee Bucks' 20-game run in 1971 are longer.
Houston hasn't lost since a 97-89 defeat at home against Utah on Jan. 27. The Rockets are 28-4 since the start of the calendar year.
What's more, Houston has won its last seven games without the services of All-Star center Yao Ming, who was lost for the season when he suffered a stress fracture in his left foot on Feb. 24.
"Rick is doing a great job, but I don't hear anybody extolling his virtues around the league," says Jack Ramsay, a mentor of Adelman who will serve as radio analyst for ESPN radio's Sunday showdown between the Rockets and the Lakers at the Toyota Center.
Nor is anybody talking about Adelman's career as Hall of Fame-worthy. But it is.
"Rick has had a Hall of Fame career without one word of self-praise or looking for any attention," says Ramsay, 83, who gave Adelman his first NBA coaching opportunity as a member of his Portland staff in 1983 out of Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Ore. "He just goes about doing his work.
"But this has been typical Rick. Everywhere he has been, he is under the radar. He is not a guy who attracts attention to himself in anything. During a game he sits there and does what he needs to do for the team without making any fuss."
