by Devin Black

Created on: June 30, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

1. Greg Popovich
2. Pat Riley
3. Larry Brown
4. Phil Jackson
5. Rudy Tomjonovich

That is a complete list of every head coach to win an NBA Championship in the past 17 years!

Winning a Championship as an NBA coach is a very special and unique event, as evidenced by the numbers above.

But one thing that all of these coaches have in common, is that they were all very experienced coaches.

Reggie Theus' coaching experience, on the other hand, consists of a few years as an assistant and head coach in the NCAA, and playing the role of head coach Bill Fuller on NBC's television show Hang Time.

The second ingredient to success that the aforementioned coaches had, that Reggie does not, is having a great team, full of great players.

The above coaches had the likes of Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal and Tim Duncan, just to name a few. Currently Reggie Theus has past-their-prime players such as Mike Bibby, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Brad Miller and the infamous volatile Ron Artest, who may at any moment snap and run into the stands swinging fists, or just decide he doesn't want to play basketball anymore, and that he'd rather work on promoting his music career.

Further, management has done very little in the off-season to improve the 5th worst team in the Western Conference. The team has extended their brightest pieces of the puzzle in Kevin Martin, but it's hardly enough to compensate for the rest of the team. So far this off-season, along with extending Kevin Martin, all they've done is to add another slow big man, Spencer Hawes, via the draft, who oft-compared to Brad Miller should fit right in with the slow big men that they already have. Their other move was to add another veteran journeyman Mikki Moore. While Mikki is a solid player, who actually had a relative "break-out year" last season, he will not even propel the Kings to mediocrity, let alone a contender level.

Basically what it boils down to, is that not very many coaches ever win a Championship, and it's very unlikely that a coach with little experience is going to have much of a chance of winning with a older team that lacks potential and isn't very good to begin with.

There's a chance he could, there's always a chance, but this team is currently not fit to make a Championship run, management does not seem have the foresight to see the direction of this team, and with NBA coaching jobs being one of the most vulnerable jobs in any area, he likely won't have a long time to prove himself, especially when you consider that this will already be the Kings third coach in only two years. That's quite a turnover rate!

It takes a very unique mix of knowledge, experience, psychology, great management and great players in order to win that highly coveted prize - the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy. The Kings simply do not have that mix.

In sum, no, Reggie won't bring a Championship to Sacramento. However, that doesn't mean that he cannot still be regarded as a great coach. Very few coaches ever get the chance to hoist that trophy in the air, and none of them did it with as little as Theus will have in Sacramento. If Theus were replaced by any of the five Championship winning coaches above, I would be making the same prediction for them as well. It's an unfortunate way to start your NBA coaching career, but Reggie may end up being the fall guy for such a poorly constructed team with little to no hope.

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