Rick Adelman, who over seven years improbably catapulted from coaching a community college basketball team to twice steering the Portland Trail Blazers to the N.B.A. Finals, but whose most memorable game was a heartbreaking defeat that spawned charges of a league conspiracy, has died. He was 79.<\/p>\n
The NBA Coaches Association announced the death on Monday<\/a> in a statement on social media that did not cite a cause or say where he died.<\/p>\n Over 23 seasons with four teams, Adelman led the star players Clyde Drexler in Portland, Chris Webber in Sacramento and Yao Ming in Houston. His teams made the playoffs 16 times and won at least 50 games 11 times. He is one of 11 coaches in league history to have won 1,000 or more regular-season games.<\/p>\n A 6-foot-1 guard who started for Portland in the Trail Blazers\u2019 inaugural 1970-71 season, Adelman played for five N.B.A. teams over seven years. After retiring in 1975, he set his sights on coaching high school basketball or at the lower levels of the college game.<\/p>\n He logged six successful seasons at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Ore., until Jack Ramsay, the Trail Blazers\u2019 coach, hired him in 1983 as an assistant.<\/p>\n \u201cJack took a chance \u2014 that was the greatest thing that ever happened to me,\u201d Adelman told<\/a> The St. Paul Pioneer-Press in 2013.<\/p>\n After 47 games in the 1988-89 season, he became interim head coach after Mike Schuler was fired. Though the Blazers subsequently went 14-21 and were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Los Angeles Lakers, several players, appreciating Adelman\u2019s no-drama personality, supported his return on a one-year contract.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t all of a sudden going to become a my-way-or-the-highway type of guy now that I was a head coach,\u201d Adelman told The New York Times in 1990<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Adelman\u2019s first full season, the Blazers, led by Drexler, went 53-29 and stormed through the Western Conference playoffs before losing in the 1990 league finals to the Detroit Pistons in five games.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a team that was ready to win, a special group,\u201d Adelman said when he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021.<\/p>\n Portland again advanced to the finals two years later against the Chicago Bulls. The series was deadlocked at 2-2 but Michael Jordan\u2019s 46 points helped the Bulls win a pivotal fifth game in Portland before his team sealed the title in Chicago.<\/p>\n Adelman failed to match the championship won by Ramsay\u2019s Blazers in 1977, but he departed Portland in 1994 with a higher regular-season winning percentage than his mentor.<\/p>\n After three losing seasons with the Golden State Warriors, Adelman lifted the Sacramento Kings to the playoffs in the 1998-99 season, which was shortened by a labor dispute. That result came after a disappointing 27-55 finish in 1997-98.<\/p>\n He hired Pete Carril<\/a>, known for his Princeton offense, which stressed fundamental body and ball movement, as an assistant. Adelman\u2019s tailored version was called \u201ccorners,\u201d which provided players\u2019 broad license to improvise by reading the defense.<\/p>\n