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The 2026 NBA Playoffs are all about the matchups, and that puts an added emphasis on coaching. Coaching often has a way of falling into the background during the league’s eternal 82-game regular season, but maximizing every possession matters in the playoffs, and it puts a harsh spotlight on the men in the big chair who need to consistently cook up advantages for their teams to advance.
The narratives can change fast in the playoffs. It feels like several people on this list are coaching for their jobs even if they had a lot of regular season success. With offseason openings in Chicago and New Orleans and a potential opening in Portland, we already know the coaching carousel will be spinning this summer. You can bet that there will be a couple more vacancies before the end of the season.
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Let’s rank every head coach who made the 2026 NBA Playoffs.
The Magic were my preseason NBA Finals pick out of the East, and instead they barely snuck into the playoffs as the No. 8 seed. Orlando was the most disappointing team of the season, and it seemed likely they would try out a new head coach before making a major shake-up to the core once the season ended. Then something funny happened: the Magic finally got healthy and started playing their best basketball at the right time. Orlando looks like it can absolutely win its first-round series against the No. 1 seed Detroit Pistons. If the Magic advance, they probably can’t fire Mosley even if they never should have been the 8-seed to begin with. Mosley deserves a ton of credit for optimizing his defense to limit Cade Cunningham and shutdown Jalen Duren to this point. Everything is fluid in the playoffs, and that includes this ranking of Mosley.
Chauncey Billups was arrested in a federal gambling probe after the first game of the season, and it thrust assistant Tiago Splitter into a head coaching role the rest of the season. All Splitter did was lead the Blazers to a winning record for the first time in five years, and finally get them back into the playoffs. Splitter has been good enough to keep the job going forward, but new owner Tom Dundon is emerging as…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/nba-head-coach-rankings-16-150750777.html
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Publish date : 2026-04-27 15:07:00
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