Ranking LeBron James' NBA head coaches, from worst to best
Los Angeles Lakers head coach Darvin Ham (left) and forward LeBron James (right).
LeBron James’ 21st season in the NBA ended in disappointment, with the Denver Nuggets eliminating the Los Angeles Lakers in the opening round of the playoffs in five games.
The postseason loss put Lakers head coach Darvin Ham’s future with the franchise in doubt. The Athletic reported he is “highly unlikely” to return, which means James — whose own NBA future is uncertain — could have his ninth NBA coach if he returns next season.
“We’ll cross that when we need to,” James told the media about his future after the loss to the Nuggets, per ESPN.
James — who has a reputation for being hard on head coaches — has averaged a new HC every 2.6 seasons. Some of them have fared far better than the others.
Here is how we ranked the eight, from worst to best.
8. Luke Walton | Los Angeles Lakers | 2018-2019
In 2018, James joined the Lakers, a rebuilding team with a young Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram.
After a win against Golden State on Christmas Day, the Lakers were 20-14, but James’ groin injury in that game forced him to miss 6.5 weeks and the team imploded afterward, finishing 37-45 and missing the playoffs.
“I think he did as great of a job as you could do under the circumstances,” James said of Walton, per ESPN in 2019.
Walton, who left the Lakers at the end of the 2018-19 season, went on to coach for a disastrous two-plus seasons with the Sacramento Kings. He’s now an assistant with the Cavaliers.
7. Paul Silas | Cleveland Cavaliers | 2003-2005
Silas was James’ first head coach in the NBA. Over his two seasons, he coached a rebuilding Cavaliers team to a 69-77 record, but Cleveland did not make the playoffs, forcing the front office to make a change.
Cleveland put Brendan Malone in temporary charge of the team for the remainder of the 2004-05 season. He went 8-10.
“Probably one of the greatest human beings I’ve ever been around,” James said of Silas after he died in 2022.
6. Darvin Ham | Los Angeles Lakers | 2022-present
Despite coaching a roster that boasts James and Anthony Davis, Ham hasn’t found a winning formula.
Some of GM Rob Pelinka’s wizardry at the 2023 trade deadline reinvigorated the team and spurred a run to the Western Conference Finals, but the Nuggets swept Los Angeles in four games in the series.
This season, Ham failed to instill an identity with the Lakers. They floundered near the 10th seed most of the season and qualified for the playoffs via the play-in tournament.
James recently admitted to overriding Ham’s game plan during a matchup with the Clippers, a possible sign of a superstar-head coach rift.
“We had switching built in versus Kawhi [Leonard] and versus James [Harden] and whatever the case may be, and I vetoed it in the second half,” he said in a recent episode of the “Mind the Game Pod w/ LeBron James and JJ Redick” podcast.
5. David Blatt | Cleveland Cavaliers | 2014-2016
Blatt — an Israeli-American who had coached in Europe most of his career — coached the Cavaliers after James returned to Cleveland in 2014 following his four seasons in Miami. Blatt spent two years with James, going 83-40 during the regular season.
In his first year with James, Blatt coached the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals, but they lost to the Golden State Warriors in six games. Although the team had a 30-11 record, Cleveland fired Blatt midway through the following season, replacing him with Tyronn Lue, who coached the team to an NBA title.
Blatt and James often did not see eye to eye.
“He was an NBA player for his whole life, one of the best ever in the history of the game, and I was a first-time NBA coach, who had spent the rest of his career in Europe,” Blatt told Haaretz, an Israeli publication, in 2018 about coaching James. “That’s a wide river.”
4. Mike Brown | Cleveland Cavaliers | 2005-2010
No one has coached James for more consecutive seasons than Brown. The pair spent five years together during the superstar’s initial run with the Cavaliers.
Together, James and Brown took Cleveland to three Eastern Conference semifinals, an Eastern Conference Finals and an NBA Finals. Nevertheless, Brown couldn’t guide a young James to a title, leading him to leave for the Miami Heat in free agency in summer 2010.
Brown is now rebuilding his reputation with the Sacramento Kings, having drastically turned around the roster and direction of the franchise.
James endorsed his former head coach for Coach of the Year honors in 2023.
“HANDS DOWN!!!!!!” James responded to a post on X. “Mike Brown got them boys hoopin hoopin!!”
3. Frank Vogel | Los Angeles Lakers | 2019-2022
Vogel coached James and the Lakers to a championship in 2020 — a title won at the bubble in Walt Disney World in Orlando during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During his tenure with the Lakers, the defensive-minded coach amassed a 127-98 record, James’ most successful stretch in Los Angeles.
Following an awful 33-49 2021-22 season, however, the Lakers fired Vogel, whom the Phoenix Suns hired as HC in 2023. Minnesota swept Phoenix in the opening round of this season’s playoffs, so Vogel, like Ham, could soon be unemployed.
2. Tyronn Lue | Cleveland Cavaliers | 2016-18
Lue, one of the best tacticians in the NBA, steered James and the Cavaliers to a championship in 2016, a run that is arguably the most memorable in league history.
In the NBA Finals that season, the Cavaliers overcame a 3-1 deficit to beat a Warriors team that finished the regular season a league-record 73-9 and featured an in-their-prime Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
In 2020, Lue became head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, who are expected to contend for a championship this season. He remains one of the better coaches in the NBA.
Following a Jan. 7 matchup between the Lakers and Clippers, James praised the leadership and coaching ability of Lue: “It don’t take T-Lue long to make sure [expletive] get right.”
1. Erik Spoelstra | Miami Heat | 2010-14
Spoelstra is widely accepted as the NBA’s best coach. He won two championships with James during their time together in South Beach and has contended with the Heat despite having a subpar roster in recent years.
As such, it’s fair to say Spoelstra and James won together, as both are seen as among the best in history in their field. James admires the Heat coach.
After Spoelstra signed a contract extension in January, James tweeted, “Worth every single cent of that contract!!!”
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