Don Nelson, a Hall of Fame NBA coach whose position-flexible systems influenced modern basketball, died Aug. 9, 2026, at 86, NBC Sports Bay Area reported.
Nelson spent 11 seasons with the Boston Celtics from 1965 to 1976 and won five NBA championships as a player. He moved into coaching with the Milwaukee Bucks, first as an assistant and then as head coach 18 games into the 1976–77 season. He later combined the coaching and general-manager roles for more than a decade. The Bucks won at least 50 games in each season from 1980 through 1987.
In Milwaukee, Nelson used forward Paul Pressey to initiate the offense, assigning him ball-handling duties usually given to a guard. The approach helped bring the term “point forward” into NBA vocabulary. Nelson also favored lineups built around versatility rather than a traditional big lineup.
From 1988 to 1995, Nelson coached the Golden State Warriors and formed Run TMC, the fast-paced trio of Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin. He returned to Golden State as coach in 2006 and led the eighth-seeded Warriors, nicknamed the “We Believe” team, to a first-round upset of the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks in the 2007 playoffs.
While coaching Golden State in June 2009, Nelson attended a St. Mary’s game featuring Stephen Curry and said he saw a superstar, according to remarks published by the San Francisco Chronicle. The Warriors selected Curry seventh in the 2009 NBA draft.
Nelson’s final NBA season was 2009–10, and he finished with 1,335 regular-season coaching wins. He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012. By 2019, smaller lineups with versatile players, forwards handling the ball and spread-out, high-tempo offenses had become part of mainstream NBA strategy, extending ideas Nelson tested in Milwaukee and Golden State.
