Players Prefer Jackson, D'Antoni

An NBA player poll asking "Which head coach would you most like to play for?" revealed pretty unsurprising results. Phil Jackson (nine championships) and Mike D'Antoni (shoot as much as you want and have fun doing it) were tied for most preferred coach.

After that were the grand old men of the league: Gregg Popovich, Don Nelson and Jerry Sloan. Other coaches mentioned by at least 7 players included Rick Adelman, Nate McMillan, Pat Riley, Doc Rivers and Avery Johnson.

One interesting note in the article: rookies mostly wanted to play for Jackson, perhaps because they grew up watching the golden-era Bulls; players 30 and up mostly wanted to play for Popovich, probably because they've been in the league long enough to experience the Spurs steamroll the playoffs year after year.

FanNation |

The SI Staff's Blog | SI Players NBA Poll

As a long-suffering Milwaukee Bucks fan, I'll express surprise that Terry Stotts didn't make the list. Maybe he'll win the survey of D-League players this year...

Bonus: searching for Terry Stotts I come across an old Detroit Bad Boys post entitled... "Terry Stotts: 'It's Hard Out There for a Pimp.'" Worth it for the photo at the bottom of the article.

(Via SI Home.)