NBA Mourns Don Nelson: Five-Time Champion and Second-Winningest Coach Dies at 86

Don Nelson, one of basketball's true innovators and the second-winningest coach in NBA history, has died at the age of 86. His passing was confirmed by multiple outlets including the NBA itself, AP, Reuters, NBC, CBS and The Guardian, underlining just how significant a figure he was across the sport.

Nelson's career spanned six decades and touched almost every corner of the game. As a player, he won five championships with the Boston Celtics, forming part of some of the most dominant teams of the 1960s and early 1970s. He then reinvented himself as a coach, taking charge of the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks across a career that saw him rack up 1,335 regular season wins, a tally bettered only by Gregg Popovich.

He was renowned as a tactical pioneer, credited with popularising small-ball lineups and positionless basketball long before they became fashionable league-wide philosophies. His Warriors teams of the mid-2000s, including the famous 'We Believe' side that stunned the top-seeded Mavericks in the 2007 playoffs, are still cited as templates for the pace-and-space era that followed.

Nelson was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012, recognised both for his playing achievements in Boston and his transformative coaching influence. Tributes have poured in from across the basketball world, with the NBA describing him as 'an original' who experienced the game from every possible angle, as player, coach and executive.

His death marks the end of an era for a generation of fans and players who watched him shape the modern game, and the volume of tributes from major American and British outlets alike reflects just how far his influence stretched beyond box scores and win totals.