List of National Basketball Association player-coaches

A player-coach is a member of team who simultaneously holds both playing and coaching duties. The term can be used to refer to both players who serve as head coaches or as assistant coaches. In the National Basketball Association (NBA), there have been 40 players who also served as their teams' head coaches at the same time. The NBA was founded in 1946 as the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The league adopted its current name at the start of the 1949–50 season when it merged with the National Basketball League (NBL). After the salary cap was instituted in 1984–85 season, the NBA has prohibited teams from employing a player-coach. The ruling was established to avoid the possibility that a team would circumvent the cap by signing a player as a player-coach, as coaches' salaries are not counted under the cap.

Ed Sadowski was the first player-coach in the league. In the BAA's inaugural season, he played for the Toronto Huskies and also served as the team's first head coach.Buddy Jeannette was the first player-coach to win the championship; he won the 1948 BAA Finals with the Baltimore Bullets.Bill Russell is the only other player-coach who has won the championship, as well as the only player-coach to win multiple championships. In 1966, he took over the Boston Celtics' head coaching duties from Red Auerbach, becoming the first African American head coach in the league. He served as the Celtics' player-coach for three seasons, winning two consecutive NBA championships in 1968 and 1969.Dave DeBusschere became the youngest head coach in the league's history when he was appointed as the Detroit Pistons' player-coach at the age of 24 in 1964. He held the position for three seasons before returning to a full-time player in 1967.Dave Cowens is the last player-coach in the league. He coached the Celtics in the 1978–79 season before relinquishing his coaching duty to focus on his playing career.

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