The 2026-27 NBA season is almost upon us, and with it comes a new set of expectations for every team. While the NBA’s new lottery rules are ripe for debate, it seems like the basic goal — to create a more competitive league — has already been achieved. It’s hard to find teams that are in active tank mode; the Bucks and Kings are the only established basement-dwellers at this point. Even the Pelicans, Grizzlies, Nets and other “bad” teams are trying to take a step in the right direction.
That means a lot of coaches are under the microscope. Only 16 teams can make the playoffs at the end of the day. Only one can win it all. There are a lot of teams hoping to at least accomplish the former. These six coaches in particular face the most pressure, starting with the man in charge of making this new experiment in Philadelphia work:
Nick Nurse, Philadelphia 76ers
A miraculous 3-1 comeback against the Celtics restored faith in a Sixers team on the brink of cataclysm — and probably saved Nick Nurse’s job, even after a second-round Knicks sweep sent GM Daryl Morey packing. The new front office, headlined by Mike Gansey and Bob Myers, pulled off one of the most stunning offseason transformations in NBA history, swapping Paul George’s albatross contract for sixth-place MVP finisher Jaylen Brown and signing LeBron James to a minimum contract. Dean Wade and Anfernee Simons were nice pickups for the second unit, too.
Suddenly the Sixers are championship or bust, rather than a team waiting out the duration of Joel Embiid’s injury-tanked contract. That puts a lot of pressure on Nurse, who has won just one playoff series in the most improbable fashion across three years on the job. Nurse’s championship bonafides no doubt played a role in Philadelphia keeping him around. He was also clearly a factor in LeBron’s decision to pick the Sixers. If Nurse were replaced by a less proven coach, it’s unclear if LeBron still takes his talents to a completely unfamiliar city for a record 24th NBA season.
Nurse has his work cut out for him, in a way. The Sixers are by far the most talented team in the NBA, but with that comes the challenge of integrating two high-usage stars to a roster that already included two established All-NBA talents in Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid, plus the reigning No. 3 overall pick in VJ Edgecombe.
There’s a catatrophic version of this grand Sixers experiment. Philly fans are well-versed in disaster and disappointment. Brown’s Boston exit was spurred, at least in part, by the perception that he wanted greater appreciation and a more focal standing in the organization. Brown and Maxey are two gifted scorers with real playmaking deficiencies. Embiid’s injury concerns are well documented. James, who will turn 42 midseason, comes with his own durability questions.
Nurse will need to navigate more ego and uncertainty than any coach in recent memory. His reputation is already complicated, at least among Sixers fans. In theory, this is the perfect roster for Nurse’s let-him-cook style of offense. Philadelphia can hunt mismatches and let the hot hand roll — assuming there’s buy-in from everyone involved. In theory, LeBron will help install more ball movement and motion, which have been lacking in prior iterations of Nurse’s offense, for reasons not entirely his own fault.
The real challenge for Nurse will be getting the Sixers up to par defensively. Embiid has lost considerable mobility, while LeBron has spent the last couple seasons coasting on that end of the floor. Edgecombe is a dawg, but he can’t do everything himself. Brown and Maxey tend to get caught napping. Nurse, known first and foremost for his expert defensive schematics in Toronto, will need to plug a lot of holes. Philadelphia’s defense has long underwhelmed under his stewardship, with the exception of that rollicking Celtics series, in which everything appeared to click into place, if only for a brief moment in time.
Nurse is a good coach, but he’s pouty persona and stubborn ways have worn on Philly fans. He hasn’t always felt like the best fit for this particular roster. The Sixers are much better positioned for a deep run now, but a lot of eyeballs will be squarely on Nurse.
He is not, however, the only NBA coach facing intense scrutiny this upcoming season.
Joe Mazzulla, Boston Celtics
Joe Mazzulla has plenty of respect and recognition at this point, and he’s a very good coach. He is not battling for his job this season. If anything, Paul George and a healthy Jayson Tatum could smooth things over a bit in terms of process. There was some clear friction between how Jaylen Brown liked the play and how Mazzulla liked his ship to run, most notably in that seven-game series collapse against Philadelphia.
If anything, the pressure on Mazzulla manifested outside of his control. Not only did Boston trade Brown to a division rival, but it set the stage for LeBron to join that very same rival. The Celtics were the two-seed in somewhat miraculous fashion a year ago. There’s no doubt Boston can win 50-plus games against this season, but leveling up in the playoffs with a less durable second star is a new challenge.
Mazzulla’s Celtics reverted to some old habits late in the Sixers series, chucking 3s and rarely applying pressure in the paint. Brown was Boston’s best rim pressure creator. George, for all his two-way talent, is 36 years old and hasn’t played 50 games in either of the last two seasons. It’s also not not noteworthy that George completely fell apart against the Knicks in round two. His stamina and durability are real question marks, in addition to Tatum in his first full season back from an Achilles tear.
Boston has a proven regular season formula, but their ability to create favorable matchups and get the opposing defense into rotations will be a major question mark come playoff time. This year will determine if Mazzulla is the unassailable basketball genius Boston fans made him out to be for so long.
Ime Udoka, Houston Rockets
Houston lost to the Lakers without Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves in the first round. With all due respect to LeBron James and his record-breaking longevity, that says more about the Rockets than it ever did about LeBron and the Lakers.
The Rockets won 52 games in an extremely competitive Western Conference, which is an achievement in its own right, but there was no shortage of discord and disappointment throughout the campaign. The warts in Udoka’s hard-lined coaching style were readily apparent. He threw players under the bus consistently in post-game press conferences, often chalking up failures to a lack of effort, rather than taking any accountability for his own schmatic shortcomings.
Udoka has real defensive chops and he clearly commands respect around the league, but Houston has seen nothing but diminishing returns since he took over on the sidelines. Udoka appeared to alienate Alperen Sengun, Reed Sheppard and even Kevin Durant at various points during the campaign. Houston’s offense was sluggish and uncreative.
If Udoka and the Rockets can’t rise to the occasion is an even more competitive landscape, it’s only a matter of time until he ends up on the hot seat.
David Adelman, Denver Nuggets
Denver’s first round flop-out was the perfect encapsulation of an incredibly frustrating and unfulfilling Nuggets season. There were times when David Adelman felt completely in over his head. It’s hard to call that surprising, as Adelman was a first-time head coach tasked with leading a veteran roster sprinting headlong toward a barely-still-open championship window. Injuries made life difficult on the Nuggets, and the front office has done precious little to support the on-court product.
Really, any ill feelings should be aimed firstly at the Nuggets’ front office for skirting the tax and failing to improve the roster around an all-time great talent in Nikola Jokić. At the end of the day, however, it’s incumbent upon the head coach to make lemonade out of whichever fruits are left to him. Adelman failed virtually every meaningful test.
The Nuggets are looking at better health this season, but Aaron Gordon is no ironman and Christian Braun’s seismic collapse in year one of a five-year contract puts Denver in a tricky position. Yet again, the front office whiffed on every conceivable path to upgrading the roster. Instead, it will fall to Adelman to fine-tune a weak second unit and build a sturdier defense around an aging Jokić.
Can he do it? Adelman has some fun sets up his sleeve. He’s no slouch in terms of the playbook. Jokić, ever the elevating force, can paper over a lot of flaws with his mere presence. That said, Denver was overpowered and outworked against Minnesota in round one. It will take a lot to get them back on the Wolves’ level, not to mention Oklahoma City or San Antonio.
Kenny Atkinson, Cleveland Cavaliers
Kenny Atkinson may never live down his infamous “analytically, we’ve won two of three” comment as the Knicks were sweeping Cleveland out of the Eastern Conference Finals. Atkinson has been a very good coach in this league. The Cavs were a top-six offense last season with two non-spacing bigs in the starting lineup. There’s a reason Cleveland did not hit eject despite the incredibly bad P.R. coming out of that Knicks series.
Still, there’s immense pressure on Atkinson this season. The Cavs will be looking to level up and break through in an Eastern Conference that just got much stronger. The Knicks aren’t going anywhere. Philly, Miami, Toronto and Indiana all upgraded in a big way, while Detroit, Atlanta and others at least tweaked their rosters in a meaningfully way. Cleveland put all its eggs in the LeBron James basket, which was understandable in the moment. As soon as the Philly announcement hit, however, the Cavs were left holding the bag while naked in the spotlight. This is another example of front office failure amplifying a coach’s scrutiny.
Cleveland still has a very good roster that should float through the regular season easily enough. Donovan Mitchell’s blockbuster extension takes away some of the rampant trade speculation. But Atkinson still must navigate the James Harden time bomb, which historically explodes in the playoffs. There are still those who wonder if he can fully maximize Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen in the frontcourt.
It’s hard to earnestly complain after a conference finals berth. Cleveland cleared a huge post-LeBron milestone before the Knicks sent the whole house of cards crashing to the ground. In the NBA, however, emotions and narrative carry just as much weight as pragmatic analysis. There is plenty about last season’s Cavs to laud, but Atkinson no doubt feels a burning sensation any time he sits down.
JJ Redick, Los Angeles Lakers
The Lakers are moving on from the LeBron James era, but that Hollywood spotlight never wanes. We will still see a lot of Los Angeles on national television, with Luka Dončić, Austin Reaves and Walker Kessler as the new ‘Big Three’ hoping to guide the Lakers to championship contention in the West. And look: Luka gives your team a shot, but the Lakers’ roster has a real hodgepodge feel to it, and the front office has basically emptied the whole clip, both financially and assets-wise, to construct a team with extra-long title odds.
Again, the front office’s missteps lead to pressure on the coach. There’s not much to complain about when it comes to the job J.J. Redick has done since leaving the podcast booth to coach the NBA’s most historic and media-frenzied franchise. Redick is extremely creative with his playcalling. He seems to take inspiration from a wide range of both current and former coaches. The X’s and O’s knowledge he espoused on his podcast and readily apparent in real games. The Lakers overcame myriad personnel shortcomings to beat Houston in the first round — and to claim home-court advantage in the West, a major accomplishment for any team starting Deandre Ayton at center.
That said, the Lakers are now all-in with a very strange roster. Kessler is a beautiful fit next to Dončić on paper, but he’s far less qualified than his $130 million contract might suggest. The Dončić-Reaves backcourt won’t learn to play defense over night. Quentin Grimes and Sandro Mamukelashvili are both solid role players and vastly overpaid, especially in Grimes’ case. The Lakers lack size, athleticism and perimeter defense in a big way. And, absent LeBron, the Lakers now need to prove their decision to not-so-subtly push The King out the door was warranted. This is the path L.A. chose and it features a lot of uneven terrain.
Redick has handled the pressures of coaching in L.A. as well as anyone could expect. He can come off a bit bratty, a bit quick to snap at the media, but there’s a lot of built-in pressure with the Lakers job. Now it’s amplified by the mystifying machinations of Rob Pelinka and the top brass.
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