His death was announced by the Lakers.

A perfectionist as both a player and a coach, Sharman is also credited with introducing what is now a fixture of the pro and college games: the morning shootaround, a light game-day workout to loosen up, set strategy and prepare for the evening's contest.

For 10 seasons beginning in the fall of 1951, the 6-foot-1-inch Sharman teamed with the playmaking guard Bob Cousy to form one of the N.B.A.'s legendary backcourts. A premier shooter who knew how to get open to receive Cousy's creative passes, Sharman annually finished among the league leaders in field-goal percentage. He led the Celtics in scoring four times, including in 1956-57, the season Bill Russell joined the lineup and the team won its first title.

Sharman was also one of the N.B.A.'s best free-throw shooters. He led the league in free-throw percentage a record seven times, including five seasons in a row, also a record.

A perennial All-Star who was with the Celtics when they won four N.B.A. titles, Sharman was elected to the Hall of Fame as a player in 1976. On the N.B.A.'s 50th anniversary, in 1996, he was named one of the 50 greatest players in league history.

"He deserves the ultimate accolade: he was a winner," his teammate Tommy Heinsohn said in 2007. "He was an incredible athlete, a great competitor, a tenacious defender and a terrific offensive player."

Sharman made the transition to coaching immediately after retiring from the Celtics at the end of the 1960-61 season, leading the Cleveland Pipers (owned by a young George Steinbrenner) to the championship of the upstart American Basketball League.

When the A.B.L. folded at the end of the season, Sharman became the coach of Los Angeles State (now California State, Los Angeles). He rejoined the N.B.A. in 1966 with the San Francisco Warriors and two years later became the coach of the woeful Los Angeles Stars of the American Basketball Association.

Sharman turned the Stars around. He shared A.B.A. coach of the year honors with Joe Belmont of the Denver Rockets in 1970; the next season he was 55-29 and took the team, which had moved to Utah, to the A.B.A. title.

Sharman returned to the N.B.A. in the fall of 1971 to coach the Lakers, the Celtics' Western rivals, who had lost in the finals in 7 of the previous 10 seasons. Perhaps it took a former Celtic to teach the Lakers how to put their many talents together: Los Angeles went unbeaten for two full months near the beginning of the season, winning 33 straight games.

With Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West, the Lakers continued their winning ways, finishing 69-13, the best record in league history until the Chicago Bulls went 72-10 in 1995-96. The Lakers coasted through the playoffs and defeated the Knicks in five games in the finals to win their first N.B.A. championship since moving to Los Angeles from Minneapolis.

Sharman was named coach of the year, making him the only coach in professional basketball history to win the honor in three leagues.

He made only one other appearance in the N.B.A. finals, losing the next year to the Knicks, before retiring from coaching at the end of the 1975-76 season and becoming the Lakers' general manager. He became the team's president in 1983 and retired from that post in 1990. His N.B.A. coaching record was 333-240 in the regular season and 35-27 in the playoffs.

In 2004, Sharman was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame for the second time, becoming only the third person — John Wooden and Lenny Wilkens are the others — to be voted in as both a player and a coach.

"Bill Sharman was as competitive a guy as you'd ever want to play against," said West, whose rookie season coincided with Sharman's final year with the Celtics. "As a coach, he had a great way with players and people; I rarely saw him get upset. His years coaching the Lakers were probably the happiest of my playing career."

William Walton Sharman was born on May 25, 1926, in Abilene, Tex. He moved with his family to California as a child and attended the University of Southern California, where he was a two-time all-American. He also starred in baseball and was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers, playing in their organization during the first half of the 1950s.

In addition to his wife, Joyce, he is survived by two sons, Jerry and Tom; two daughters, Nancy Scott and Janice Hand; six grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

Sharman invented the shootaround as a way to burn off nervous energy on game days. Starting in the middle of his playing career, he would go to a neighborhood gym in the morning to dribble and take shots, finding that it helped him feel more confident that evening.

He took the shootaround with him to his first coaching jobs in the A.B.L. and the A.B.A., but many predicted that the concept would not work in the N.B.A., especially with a team of veteran stars like the Lakers. Sharman proved the critics wrong as the Lakers — even Chamberlain — took to the 40-minute morning workouts and cited them as an important element in the team's success.

After the Lakers won the championship in 1972, every other team in the league added the shootaround to its game-day regimen.