5 Interim Coaches Who Won It All

"Interim" is supposed to mean caretaker — keep the seat warm, don't break anything. These five kept the seat warm all the way to a championship. (And no, Pat Riley doesn't count — we'll explain.)

5. Tyronn Lue is disqualified, and so is Pat Riley — read this first

Two famous "interim" title stories fail the test. Ty Lue (2016 Cavs) was named the full head coach — 3 years, ~$9.5 million — the same day David Blatt was fired with the Cavs in first place (per Elias, the first coach ever fired while leading his conference). And Pat Riley (1982 Lakers) got the job at the most chaotic press conference in NBA history: Magic demanded a trade, Jerry Buss fired Paul Westhead 11 games in, announced Jerry West as "offensive coach" — West's reply: "Like hell!" — and the job landed on broadcaster-turned-assistant Riley, permanently, on the spot. Accidental coach? Absolutely. Interim? Never. The real list starts now.

4. Bob Lemon, 1978 Yankees — Fired in June, Champion in October

Billy Martin resigned in late July after saying of Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner: "One's a born liar, the other's convicted." In came Bob Lemon — who'd been fired by the White Sox weeks earlier. The Yankees were coming back from a deficit that had peaked at 14 games behind Boston; they caught the Red Sox, won the Bucky Dent playoff at Fenway, and took the World Series. Fired to champion in under four months — with the added Yankees absurdity that five days after Lemon's hiring, Steinbrenner announced Martin would return in 1980.

3. Jack McKeon, 2003 Marlins — The 72-Year-Old From the Farm

Florida was 16-22 in May 2003 when they called a 72-year-old retiree off his North Carolina farm. Cigar-chomping Jack McKeon went 75-49 the rest of the way, dragged the Marlins into the wild card, and beat the Yankees in the World Series — in Yankee Stadium — becoming the oldest manager ever to win it all. Manager of the Year, too. Retirement is negotiable.

2. Paul Westhead, 1980 Lakers — The Accident That Built Showtime

November 1979: Lakers coach Jack McKinney's bicycle gears locked at a stop sign in Palos Verdes and he suffered a near-fatal head injury — while riding to play tennis with his assistant, Paul Westhead. The interim assistant inherited a 9-4 team and a rookie named Magic Johnson. In Game 6 of the Finals, with Kareem out injured, Westhead started the 20-year-old point guard at center: 42 points, 15 rebounds, 7 assists, all five positions, title. The man McKinney was biking toward finished the season McKinney started.

1. Steve Fisher, 1989 Michigan — Six Games, Six Wins, One Banner

The purest interim story ever told. Two days before the NCAA tournament, Michigan learned coach Bill Frieder had secretly taken the Arizona State job. Athletic director Bo Schembechler threw him out immediately with the greatest personnel quote in college sports history: "A Michigan man will coach Michigan — not an Arizona State man." (The irony: Frieder was the actual Michigan grad; interim replacement Steve Fisher went to Illinois State.)

Fisher had never been a head coach at any level. He went 6-0. In overtime of the title game, Rumeal Robinson — a 64% foul shooter — stepped to the line with 3 seconds left and made both. Michigan 80, Seton Hall 79. Fisher won a national championship before he ever won a regular-season game.

Honorable Mention: The Man Who Stayed Interim Through the Parade

Craig Berube, 2019 Blues deserves his own paragraph because his case is the most extreme: named interim in November 2018 with St. Louis buried in the standings, he carried the interim tag through the entire run — worst-to-first, a Game 7 win in Boston, the franchise's first Stanley Cup — and only signed his real contract after the parade. He hoisted the Cup as a temp. Only Larry Robinson (2000 Devils, 8 games) had ever done it in the NHL before.

Who'd we miss? And which current assistant is one bicycle accident from immortality? (Too soon, Jack? It worked out.)