Twenty years before Boston’s Bill Russell led to the Celtics to back-to-back championships as a player-coach, Buddy Jeannette of the Baltimore Bullets both played for and coached the team to the 1948 championship of the Basketball Association of America, as the NBA was known in an earlier incarnation. Jeannette was an all-star guard. Just how Jeannette, Russell, and any of the 38 other players who held both jobs simultaneously managed to do it is a good question – especially given the need to concentrate on one’s own assignments while also calling timeouts, making substitutions, and plotting strategic moves. Boston center Dave Cowens was the league’s last player-coach during the 1978-79 season. The league prohibited hiring player coaches beginning in 1984 so that teams couldn’t work around the salary cap .
Why is Christian Science in our name?
Why is Christian Science in our name?
Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.
The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.
Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.
Explore values journalism About us
From Wilt Chamberlain to Jeremy Lin: 10 NBA 'firsts'
Jeremy Lin's rise on the NBA radar provides the impetus to look back at Wilt Chamberlain's highest-scoring game and nine other NBA 'firsts.'
5. The first player-coach to lead his team to an NBA title: Buddy Jeannette
