Who is the best ever coach in basketball?

IMHO, Here's my rankings as far as overall including men AND women's :

1. Wooden

Then there's a tie:
2a. Coach K
2b Coach Auriemma

The task to rate coaches with Women's bball is kind of hard because there's so little competition at the top as compared to the level at men's college ball.

In women's college b-ball, he's the top coach, IMHO.

However, Pat Summitt of Tenn did it the longest and has the most wins. There can be strong debate as far as the women's side of b-ball whether or not she was tops...but in head-to-head, Geno, I think, he has the edge.

Furthermore about Pat Summitt, more than once she was asked by the Tenn men's basketball powers-that-be to coach the men's college basketball team. I doubt there's ever been any precedent for that elsewhere.

John Wooden.

After that, I've no opinion.

To me, the one that always got the most from a minimal talent pool was Jack Hartman, who had a tremendous record with only two players who went on to the NBA. Additionally, he was the mentor to Lon Kruger, who is now the only coach to take four teams to March Madness.

Hey, Cowdoc..welcome back to active participation. I hope you and your Mrs have been well.

Not familiar with that coach you wrote about. I'll look him up.

Ok, I looked him up.

He's quite distinguished with super credentials:
"Jack Hartman (October 7, 1925 – November 6, 1998) was an American college men's basketball coach.

Hartman played basketball and football collegiately at Oklahoma State University with his basketball tutelage under famed coach Henry Iba. After college he played quarterback in the CFL before becoming a basketball coach. After leading the Coffeyville (Kansas) Junior College basketball team to the NJCAA National Championship with a 32-0 season in 1962, he took his high-octane offense to Southern Illinois University, replacing the successful Harry Gallatin, who had taken the head coaching job with the St. Louis Hawks. In 1967, passing up the NCAA Division II tournament after two successive second-place finishes, Hartman's Salukis won the NIT Championship, which was much more highly-regarded then than it is today. He led Southern Illinois University into Division I before taking over at Kansas State when Cotton Fitzsimmons left to coach in the NBA. He had led Kansas State to more basketball victories than any other coach in school history, and who coached the Knicks' great Walt Frazier at Southern Illinois.

Hartman spent 16 seasons as head coach at Kansas State University, where he won 294 games and finished in first or second place in the Big Eight Conference in 10 of those 16 seasons"

I firmly believe Jack was by far the best coach no one had ever heard of.

I would call it a 3-way tie as far as success goes. Wooden took advantage, just as Auriemma is currently doing, of a playing-field that featured a general lack of parity and players who stayed for 4 years. The competitive landscape of men's basketball in Wooden's day was similar to that of women's today. Coach K deserves to be part of the 3-way tie, because he has succeeded with so many different types of team and has rebuilt so many times and won against a level of competition that the other two didn't have to face.

As far as underrated dark-horses go, how about Brad Stevens? He took Butler to the title game in two straight years. The only thing that prevented a more sustained run of success was the Celtics snapping him up and taking him away from the college game.

Phil Jackson or are we limiting ourselves to college hoops?

It's wide open. Phil Jackson definitely is a deity of the basketball world.