Happy 79th Birthday Rick Adelman

An NBA legend celebrates a birthday on June 16 as Hall of Fame head coach Rick Adelman turns 79. 

Adelman, a native of Lynnwood, Calif., was a 6 foot, 1 inch point guard in his playing days. He attended Loyola Marymount University and averaged 18.6 points over three seasons there and in the 1968 NBA Draft was taken 79th overall by the San Diego Rockets. 

Adelman played two seasons in San Diego (112 games) before 237 games as a Portland Trail Blazer. He played 55 games with the Chicago Bulls in 1973-74 before 58 games total in his final season of 1974-75, which he split between Chicago, the New Orleans Jazz, and the Kansas City-Omaha Kings. Adelman’s best season as a pro was his third season of 1970-71, when he averaged 12.6 points, 4.7 assists, and 3.5 rebounds on 42.2% shooting (11 shots) in 28 minutes per game. He posted three double doubles that season (points and assists), and 10 times scored 20 or more points, including a career-high 27 points against the Boston Celtics on January 5, 1971. Adelman shot 10-for-16 in the game and made seven of his eight free-throw attempts. 

Prior to his first NBA job as an assistant with the Trail Blazers (1983-84), Adelman was the head coach at Chemeketa Community College (Salem, Ore.). At Chemeketa, Adelman also served in their counseling department where he gave guidance to students about two-year colleges. 

After five and a half seasons as an NBA assistant, Adelman took over the Trail Blazers for 35 games in 1989, with the team going 14-21. The next season, the team turned things around in a major way, winning 59 games and winning the Western Conference. They defeated the Dallas Mavericks 3-0 in Round 1, the San Antonio Spurs 4-3 in the second round, and the Phoenix Suns 4-2 in the Western Conference Finals before facing the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals. Despite losing in five games, Adelman had flipped the franchise’s fortunes, and over the next three seasons the Blazers would win at least 51 games. 

A staple of Adelman’s system was the corner offense, which prioritized read and react. His 1989-90 Blazer squad saw five players average double figures, led by Clyde Drexler’s 23.6 points per game. Terry Porter, Cliff Robinson, Jerome Kersey, Buck Williams, and Cliff Robinson were intrical parts. 

The Blazers won the Western Conference again in 1992 (57 wins) but lost in the Finals to the Chicago Bulls. The season prior, 1990-91, the team went an NBA best 63-19. They had the NBA’s third highest scoring offense at 114.7 points per game and made the Western Conference Finals where they lost in six games to the Los Angeles Lakers. 

After 47 wins in 1993-94 with the Blazers, Adelman was out of coaching for one season before he was hired by the Golden State Warriors, where he coached for the 1995-96 season and 1996-97 season. After 36 and 30 wins there, Adelman two seasons later became the head coach of the Sacramento Kings, another franchise that, like Portland, he would turn around. 

In what are to date the last (maybe the only) glory days of the Kings’ franchise in Sacramento, the team went 27-23 in the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season, won 44 games in 1999-00, and then for five consecutive seasons won 50+ games - 55-27 in 2000-01, 61-21 in 2001-02, 59-23 in 2002-03, 55-27 in 2003-04, and 50-32 in 2004-05.

The team lost in the first round in Adelman’s first two seasons at the helm, but made trips to the Western Conference Semifinals, the Western Conference Finals, and then back-to-back Western Conference Semifinals appearances before first round appearances in 2004-05 and 2005-06. After his final season as head coach of the Kings, the team went through a 16-season playoff drought before finally making the playoffs again in the 2022-23 season. 

Adelman’s King teams that included Mike Bibby, Doug Christie, Peja Stojavokic, Chris Webber and Vlade Divac were the best passing teams in the league with Christie a tough defender and Stojakovic a knock-down shooter. Webber was one of the best power forwards in the game, and he and Divac formed a lethal passing combination at the four and five spots. The ball movement was exceptional. Bobby Jackson and Hedo Turkoglu were key bench players. The 2002 Kings made the Western Conference Finals, losing to the Lakers in seven games. Their playoff battles with the Lakers in 2001 and 2002 were must-see, back when Arco Arena held the league’s best home court advantage. 

In 2004-05, Cuttino Mobley was a dependable guard for the team, averaging 17.8 points per game, and new center Brad Miller fit the Adelman mold of a center who could shoot and pass. One of Miller’s two all-star campaigns happened while playing for Adelman. 

For the 2007-08 season, Adelman became the head coach of the Houston Rockets, who he led to a 55-27 record that season. In his three remaining seasons in Houston, he led the Rockets to 53, 42, and 43 victories. 

Adelman’s stars in Houston included Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. In his first season as Rocket coach, the team won 22 consecutive games, from January 29, 2008 through to March 16, 2008. The streak is the fifth-longest by an NBA team. That season, the Rockets had the fourth best defense in the NBA, giving up 92.0 points per game. The following season, the Rockets made the second round. Ron Artest came to the team for that season and gave them perimeter defense and toughness. He and Shane Battier were a solid pairing of wing defenders. 

In 2011, Adelman took over a young Minnesota team and won 26, 31, and 40 games over his final NBA seasons coaching. Miller was a 13-year veteran by this time, the team had a young and exciting point guard in Ricky Rubio and had a superstar forward in Kevin Love, who was in the same vein as Webber as a forward who could not only score and rebound very well but also pass at a very high level. Webber is one of the greatest passers ever at his position and was a seamless fit on Adelman’s clubs. 

Adelman’s 1,042 coaching victories are the 10th-most all-time, and he has a career winning percentage of .582. Eleven times, Adelman’s teams won 50 or more games in a season. He coached the 1991, 2001, and 2003 All-Star Games and in 2023 was recipient of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, two years after his 2021 induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2021). In 2025, his son David was promoted to head coach of the Denver Nuggets. David had served on his dad’s staff in Minnesota.  

Happy 79th Birthday, Rick Adelman.