Who are the youngest coaches to win the NBA title?

Boston Celtics lifted the NBA trophy at TD Garden on Monday night and made history in the process - with 18 titles to their name, they have won the tournament more than any other franchise in history. It was also a landmark moment for head coach Joe Mazzulla. At 35, the Rhode Island-born tactician secured his first major title and becomes one of the youngest coaches ever to be crowned an NBA champion.

NBA head coaches: who are the youngest first-time winners?

Buddy Jeannette was just 30 years old when he won the 1948 BAA Finals in his first season as a player-coach with the Baltimore Bullets. The Bullets defeated the Philadelphia Warriors, winning the series 4-2 with Buddy ending as the team’s fourth top scorer with an average of 8.8 points per game. One of basketball’s early pioneers, he was considered on the best backcourt players of his day. He retired from playing in 1950 to focus on his coaching career at Georgetown University, returning to the Bullets for one season in an interim role in 1964. He was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame in 1994 and passed away aged 80 in 1998.

Jeanette won his first title less than two years after the Basketball Association of America (BAA) had been founded. And with professional basketball still in its infancy, it’s hardly surprising that another young coach guided his team to lift the third edition of the recently-formed tournament. John Kundla was at the helm when the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Washington Capitols 4-2 to clinch the title in 1949. Kundla was 32 and had only been coaching for three years when he won the first of five NBA championships with the Lakers - the glamour team of 1950s basketball.

During his 11 years in Minneapolis, Kundla ended with a record of 423–302 and for the next part of the next decade, continued his coaching career at the University of Minnesota. He was named as of the 10 greatest coaches in NBA history when the league celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1996. Kundla lived a long and full life, spending his final days in a Minneapolis nursing home where he died aged 101 in July 2017.

The third player on the list is George Senesky who oversaw the Philadelphia Warriors 1-4 series win over the Fort Wayne Pistons in 1956, at the age of 34. Senesky had been part of the team that played in the first two BAA Finals (winning the second edition in 1947) with the Warriors and went into coaching two years after his retirement from playing, replacing Eddie Gottlieb. He led the Eastern All-Stars in the sixth edition of the NBA All-Star Game in 1956. Senesky finished his coaching career with a record of 119–97 (.551).

Another NBA legend, Bill Russell, is the second Celtics coach to feature in the Top 10. At 34, he was slightly younger than Mazzulla when he became a first-time champion as coach in 1968. By that time, Russell has already won a staggering 11 NBA titles as a player with Boston. He would win another two as head coach - the first of them in the 2-4 series win against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Along with Buddy Jeanette, he is one of just two player-coaches to have won the NBA title. Russell entered the Hall of Fame in 1975 and passed away aged 88 in 2022.