Don Nelson never won a championship as a head coach, and it barely matters, because the man's real trophy case is a coaching tree and a scouting eye that changed how the sport gets played. 1,335 wins across four franchises, three Coach of the Year awards, and a 1998 draft-night sleight of hand in Dallas that sent a future Hall of Famer's rights to Milwaukee and brought back a 20-year-old German kid nobody else wanted: Dirk Nowitzki. Nelson also picked up Steve Nash that same summer. Between them, Nowitzki and Nash went on to win two MVPs and a championship. Nelson died Sunday. He never won a title of his own as a coach.

Here is the part obituaries tend to undersell: "Nellie Ball," the small-ball, position-optional offense he ran in Dallas and Golden State decades before it had a name, is now the default operating system of the modern NBA, the one that turned League Pass into a global product and made the Warriors a Bay Area cash machine worth $8.6 billion at last valuation. Nelson coached four teams and never touched the money his ideas eventually generated. The league he reshaped kept the equity.