Don Nelson’s failed Knicks stint was biggest regret in his blessed basketball life

This was a few years ago, and Don Nelson was on the telephone, calling from Hawaii, where he was deep into one of the happiest retirements anyone has ever had. The voice was relaxed. It might well have been given a little extra mellow by the various pastimes he had merrily engaged in once he called it quits for good, or maybe it was just the tone of a man who could look back on a full life with barely a handful of regrets.

Ironically, he was talking about one of them.

“It does bother me that it didn’t work out when I coached the Knicks,” Nelson said that day of his brief tenure as Pat Riley’s successor. “Coaching that team is one of the platinum jobs in sports, and they entrusted me with a team that had come so close. I had ideas on how to get them closer. The players had other ideas.”

He laughed.