Tom Thibodeau among winningest coaches without a title - ESPN
The New York Knicks announced the firing of head coach Tom Thibodeau on Tuesday, three days after the team's elimination in the Eastern Conference finals against the Indiana Pacers.
With Thibodeau now searching for his next job, the veteran boss remains a member of a distinctive club in league history: head coaches who have piled up victories but have never hoisted the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
Including Thibodeau, only eight coaches in NBA history have amassed over 500 career regular-season wins, hold a regular-season winning percentage above .550 and never won an NBA Finals. Here are the other coaches on the list.
Career regular-season wins: 1,221
Career regular-season winning percentage: .603
Though Sloan won well over a thousand NBA games and reached the NBA Finals twice, the longtime coach of the Utah Jazz never got over the final hurdle to secure a ring as a head coach.
After a brief stint as head coach of the Chicago Bulls, Sloan would go on to spend 27 seasons in Utah as an assistant and later, a head coach. Sloan's best chance at winning a title came a decade into his time as head coach with the franchise — the Jazz won 64 and 62 regular-season games in the 1996-97 and 1997-98 seasons, and made the Finals both years. But they ran into Michael Jordan's second three-peat with the Bulls.
Career regular-season wins: 1,175
Career regular-season winning percentage: .588
Karl's well-traveled NBA coaching career had stops with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Golden State Warriors, Seattle SuperSonics, Milwaukee Bucks, Denver Nuggets and Sacramento Kings, spending a total of 27 seasons as head coach.
The veteran coach's closest brush with Finals glory came in 1995-96 with the SuperSonics — which was also thwarted by Jordan