Every year, since 1973, one NBA general manager or team president has been named the league’s Executive of the Year. The award is certainly an honor but also shortsighted. It rewards the decision-maker who is having a good year and is prone to recency bias, and it does not necessarily reward long-term savvy or even immediate success. Since 2009, when the NBA took over the process and crowned the winner by polling league executives, its winner has come from the championship team just four times.
Being a great executive is complicated. It takes skill, smarts, guts and, yes, luck. Putting together one great year is difficult; putting together a run of them is even harder. Sometimes great work is easy to spot — one big move can swing a title — but it can also be a succession of transactions, grinding out small wins on the margins that net out big rewards over time.
While only one person sits atop the org chart, a front office builds a team. It takes a village to win a championship, from scouting to strategy to analytics to the kind of alchemy it takes to assemble a title-winning roster.
With the 2024-25 season underway, The Athletic set out to find out which teams do it best. We canvassed 40 executives across the league — presidents, general managers, VPs and assistant GMs — to rank the NBA’s top front offices. Each executive ranked their top five, and points were allotted the same way they are in NBA MVP voting: 10 points for first place, seven points for second place, five points for third, three points for fourth and one point for fifth. The only rule: Execs could not vote for their own team.
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Respondents were granted anonymity for both their votes and conversations discussing them in exchange for their candor, and each had their own criteria. Ownership constraints and market size were taken into consideration. Some valued the processes as much as the results. Some valued near-term success, while others took the long view.
Interestingly enough, winning big was no guarantee of a high finish in these rankings. The defending champion Boston Celtics landed in the top five, but they did not finish first. The front offices of other recent champions fared much worse.
But there was a runaway winner, and it wasn’t close.
Total points: 354 points (29 first-place votes; 9 second-place votes; appeared on 39 ballots)
Governor: Clayton Bennett
General manager: Sam Presti
Head coach: Mark Daigneault
It’s one thing to be crowned the winner of this inaugural front-office “competition,” but this was a landslide victory for Presti and his staff. So, why all the league-wide adulation for the job they do?
For starters, Presti — who learned under R.C. Buford and Gregg Popovich in San Antonio before taking over this front office during the Seattle SuperSonics days in 2007 — has long since proven himself to be an elite hoops architect. Building those Kevin Durant–Russell Westbrook teams (with James Harden early on) through the draft back in the day established that much. And his lack of a championship, quite clearly, was not seen by his peers as a disqualifier in this exercise.
But this latest Thunder creation is capable of two things that are typically impossible to accomplish at the same time: Title contention and (extreme) flexibility for the future. The master stroke that made it all possible — the July 2019 trade with the LA Clippers that brought Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, five first-round picks and two first-round swaps to town in exchange for Paul George — set the stage for what could be a very long run of success. The choice to make Mark Daigneault the head coach in November 2020, when he was elevated from their G League team after five years running that program, has been a hit.
Along the way, the Thunder have amassed a collection of draft picks that is unrivaled in all the Association (13 first-round picks through 2030 and 17 guaranteed second-round picks in all). The timing of this particular strategy is quite perfect, as the structure of the league’s latest collective bargaining agreement is such that the value of draft picks are at an all-time high. As one rival executive pointed out, Presti was as close to that negotiating process as anyone before the CBA’s ratification in April 2023 and clearly knew prioritizing picks was paramount in this era.
“OKC, they’re so well positioned, Jesus Christ, for the next five years,” one assistant GM said.
Even with this loaded collection of talent, in other words, they have the assets to keep adding. Presti isn’t a one-man show, though, as he relies heavily on a front-office group that also includes former Orlando Magic general manager Rob Hennigan, Jesse Gould (in his 16th season with the organization) and Wynn Sullivan (in his 13th season with the Thunder).
Thunder GM Sam Presti (right), here with broadcaster Mike Breen, has built a front office that is the envy of the NBA. (Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)
2. Boston Celtics
Total points: 250 points (9 first-place votes; 19 second-place votes; appeared on 35 ballots)
Governor: Wyc Grousbeck
President of basketball operations: Brad Stevens
Head coach: Joe Mazzulla
Stevens has only been in charge for three full seasons since he moved up from the sideline to replace Danny Ainge, but the rest of the Celtics’ organizational infrastructure has been there roughly forever, including vice president of basketball operations Mike Zarren and assistant general managers Austin Ainge and Dave Lewin. The Celtics may have built their team on the elder Ainge’s 2013 swindle of the Brooklyn Nets that yielded the draft picks that became Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, but it was Boston’s more recent work to build around those two under Stevens that won great admiration.
Stevens-era trades for Kristaps Porziņģis, Al Horford, Derrick White and Jrue Holiday established a championship nucleus around the Brown-Tatum core without breaking the bank in terms of asset costs. Finding Sam Hauser on the post-draft scrap heap and Payton Pritchard at the end of the first round extended their talent base. And when Ime Udoka was suspended and then let go, they pivoted quickly to a high-potential internal candidate (Joe Mazzulla), even though he hadn’t been a head coach before, and hit that hire out of the park.
As a result, the Celtics are the defending champions and well positioned to make another run this spring. However, the team is for sale, so potential ownership change looms over the future; the roster is also about to get extremely expensive if the Celtics keep everyone, so tough decisions lie ahead.
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Total points: 114 points (7 second-place votes; 10 third-place votes; appeared on 24 ballots)
Governor: Micky Arison
President: Pat Riley
Head coach: Erik Spoelstra
The Heat have a unique front office. Riley, its headman, has been there since 1995, and most of the people around him have too. Andy Elisburg, his deputy, actually predates Riley in Miami and has become one of the most respected executives in the NBA. Assistant GM Adam Simon started with the Heat in the video room in 1995 and is part of the team responsible for their hits in the draft and off the scrap heap. Eric Amsler, the VP of player personnel, is in his 21st season with the organization.
“In this day and age where everything is tenuous and owners are so capricious, how about Miami having that whole group there since 1995?” asked one person who voted for the Heat. “It’s an incredible testament to consistency and longevity.”
With all that time together, they have a finely tuned eye for what embodies Heat culture. The results have been remarkable. The Heat have won three NBA titles in Riley’s tenure and have made it to seven NBA Finals. They’ve won big with stars — Shaq and Dwyane Wade, and the LeBron James-led big three — and been one of the best organizations at scouting and development. They’ve been able to lure free agents — to Miami, which doesn’t hurt — and drafted well — Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Jaime Jaquez Jr. are among their latest hits.
What really stands out is the alignment up and down the organization as it feeds into what Spoelstra regularly turns into one of the league’s overachievers.
“They do a great job finding the people that fit Spo and vice versa,” another Heat voter said.
Total points: 64 points (1 first-place vote; 1 second-place vote; appeared on 15 ballots)
Governor: Robert Pera
President of basketball operations: Zach Kleiman
Head coach: Taylor Jenkins
Kleiman won the league’s Executive of the Year award in 2022 when the Grizzlies won 56 games, marking a rapid rebuild from the ashes of the Grit ‘N’ Grind era. While Memphis slipped out of the playoffs because of a plague of injuries in 2023-24, the Grizzlies have largely been a small-market success story by piecing together smart late-draft picking and value signings around high-lottery talents Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr.
Trading up to take Desmond Bane 30th in 2020 is the most obvious success, but the Grizzlies also made trades for Brandon Clarke (21st in 2019), Xavier Tillman (35th, 2020), Santi Aldama (30th, 2021) and Jake LaRavia (19th, 2022) and tabbed Vince Williams Jr. (47th, 2022) and GG Jackson (45th, 2023) as rotation-level players outside the lottery. This season, 2024 second-rounder Jaylen Wells has started 20 games and averaged 12.4 points per in those games, a key to Memphis’ start, which again has the Grizzlies near the top of the Western Conference.
One season after acquiring Rudy Gobert, Tim Connelly celebrated Gobert being named Defensive Player of the Year for 2023-24. (David Sherman / NBAE via Getty Images)
Total points: 54 points (1 first-place vote; 2 second-place votes; appeared on 15 ballots)
Governor: Glen Taylor
President of basketball operations: Tim Connelly
Head coach: Chris Finch
Connelly has taken some big swings since he took over basketball operations for the Timberwolves in the spring of 2022. He made a huge trade for Rudy Gobert during his first five weeks on the job. In October 2024, he dealt away Karl-Anthony Towns a few months after the franchise’s best season in 20 years.
That kind of chutzpah has won him the admiration of some of his peers. The Timberwolves were one of two teams aside from the Thunder and Celtics that was able to snag a first-place vote.
“I just like that Tim doesn’t give a f—,” one executive said.
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There’s more to Connelly than just risk-taking. The Wolves have made a number of smart moves since he took over a talented but unproven roster from former GM Gersson Rosas, while also building an environment for Anthony Edwards to grow into one of the best players in the league. The Gobert trade was instantly controversial, but after a rocky year, the center was the bedrock of a 56-win team that made it to the Western Conference finals, slaying the defending champs along the way — a roster also built heavily by Connelly when he was the Denver Nuggets general manager.
Total points: 41 points (3 third-place votes; 7 fourth-place votes; appeared on 15 ballots)
Governor: James Dolan
President: Leon Rose
Head coach: Tom Thibodeau
The Knicks have experienced a renaissance under Rose’s stewardship since he took over in March 2020. It seems that almost every move the front office made before this season had worked, using a combination of savvy, smarts and connections to put together the best Knicks team in a generation.
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The Knicks have not only drafted and scouted well, thanks to assistant general managers Walt Perrin and Frank Zanin, but also they have combed the NBA ranks to find the right veterans for notoriously picky head coach Tom Thibodeau. The cap and strategy team, led by Brock Aller, New York’s VP of basketball and strategic planning, seemed to have its hands on a string of deals the franchise won on the margins.
But the Knicks were the most divisive front office in the NBA among league executives. Rival executives lauded their work but also had questions about the two big swings the team took this past offseason. For some, the Towns and Mikal Bridges deals pushed them off ballots or stopped them from ranking higher.
“If they hadn’t made the Mikal Bridges trade, they would be on here,” one team executive said. “I didn’t think that was the all-in move. They paid the price of what I thought would have been a better player.”
“I would not be in the Karl Towns business for $55 million a year,” an assistant general manager said.
Still, there is a lot of respect for the Knicks. They were third on three ballots and just missed a vote from several executives.
The results that the Rose-led front office has produced is hard to ignore, even if there is room to nitpick. New York signed Jalen Brunson to a four-year deal in 2022 that quickly became a steal and then got him to re-sign at a discount. The Josh Hart trade was astute and helped shape the current character of the team. The trade for OG Anunoby last winter turned them into an East contender, and time will tell if the Towns and Bridges deals turn them into the NBA Finals team they surely hope they can be, but it has given them the best offense in the NBA and made them a top threat in the league.
“I think they’re astute and they do a good job of it,” one VP said.
7. Orlando Magic
Total points: 33 points (1 second-place vote; 3 third-place votes; appeared on 9 ballots)
Governor: Dan DeVos
President of basketball operations: Jeff Weltman
Head coach: Jamahl Mosley
The Magic are steadily accumulating more respect around the league as they keep piling up wins with one of the league’s youngest rosters. The key moment was pivoting to a rebuild at the 2021 trade deadline, when they dealt Evan Fournier, Nikola Vučević and Aaron Gordon. The Vučević deal with Chicago, in particular, has proven a ski-mask trade, as Orlando walked away with a starting center in Wendell Carter Jr. and a draft pick that became star forward Franz Wagner. Combined with their own picks (notably Jalen Suggs and Paolo Banchero), it has formed the core of one of the East’s best teams.
The Magic also have been very shrewd about working the scrap heap, paying nothing to acquire Moe Wagner and Goga Bitadze after they were let go by other teams. Contractually, they have maintained flexibility by being the master of the team option — six Magic players have them in their contracts, not including the automatic ones for first-round rookie deals.
Orlando has picked its spots in free agency, splurging this past summer on Kentavious Caldwell-Pope but mostly keeping its powder dry to re-sign or extend homegrown talent. The Magic also nailed their coach hire when they tapped Jamahl Mosley to guide their rebuild. And a max extension for Franz Wagner that had rival execs looking sideways before the season couldn’t have turned out better.
The decisions will get harder from here. The Magic may need to shed money to get below next year’s tax line once extensions for Wagner and Suggs kick in, and Banchero is a year later. But the Magic earned respect from rival execs for getting the rebuild to this point.
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Total points: 30 points (3 third-place votes; 4 fourth-place votes; appeared on 10 ballots)
Governor: Dan Gilbert
President of basketball operations: Koby Altman
Head coach: Kenny Atkinson
The Cavaliers have steadily climbed the ladder in the East since LeBron James left in 2018 and may just crest this season with their 21-4 start through 25 games. Altman became the first general manager to get a contract extension from owner Dan Gilbert — perhaps more impressive than any placement on this list — before he got promoted to president. He and general manager Mike Gansey have built a roster on the ascent thanks to a few savvy moves. Insinuating themselves into the James Harden trade in 2021 netted them Jarrett Allen. The Donovan Mitchell trade was a big swing, but getting him to sign an extension might have been more notable. The latest big decision — firing J.B. Bickerstaff last offseason and replacing him with Atkinson — looks like a winner too.
“Good job embracing the strengths (of) their players and making their big move when those were ready to assume it,” one executive said.
Total points: 21 points (1 second-place vote; 2 third-place votes; appeared on five ballots)
Governor: Joe Lacob
General manager: Mike Dunleavy Jr.
Head coach: Steve Kerr
This Warriors front office is not the same one that built and nursed the dynastic teams last decade, but it has found a way to rejuvenate the Stephen Curry-led roster by adding fresh blood and young talent. The Warriors netted their lone second-place vote because Mike Dunleavy Jr., not Bob Myers, is the GM.
“This is going to be a little bit of a controversial pick, but this has to do with who’s in charge now and not the past,” one executive said. He added that he “wouldn’t have said it prior to Mike taking over.”
The Warriors haven’t reached anywhere near the heights they did a a half decade ago, but they have gotten off to a strong start so far this season as Dunleavy, executive VP of basketball operations Kirk Lacob, assistant general manager/director of player personnel Larry Harris and a slew of young front-office staffers have remade the roster around Curry and Draymond Green. The Warriors took Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis in Dunleavy’s first draft in charge and have added a number of smart veterans around their core. The choice to let Klay Thompson leave isn’t burning them, and Dunleavy and company have done it while following Joe Lacob’s mandate to lower payroll.
R.C. Buford (left) celebrates winning the No. 1 pick in 2023 NBA Draft with Spurs managing partner Peter J. Holt and GM Brian Wright. (Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty Images)
Total Points: 14 points (2 third-place votes; 1 fourth-place vote; appeared on four ballots)
Governor: Peter J. Holt
CEO: R.C. Buford
General manager: Brian Wright
Head coach/president: Gregg Popovich
The Spurs were the class of the NBA for nearly two decades, an almost unbelievable reign. The key drivers of that period are still there. Buford is now the CEO and Popovich remains president of basketball ops. Wright took over as general manager in 2019.
“R.C. is still there,” said one Spurs voter.
While the Spurs have hit some potholes in recent years and transitioned into rebuilding mode (adding Victor Wembanyama with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft helps), they still maintain respect around the league. Perhaps the biggest testament to that is not just the on-court results but the litany of Spurs disciples in front offices around the NBA, from Sam Presti to Sean Marks to Landry Fields. A stint in the Spurs front office still carries some cachet.
Others receiving votes
T-11. Indiana Pacers and Houston Rockets (12 points)
The Pacers made a double splash as a small-market success story in 2023-24, making both the NBA Cup final and the Eastern Conference finals. Under president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard and general manager Chad Buchanan, Indy rebuilt a playoff team without tanking via an inspired trade for Tyrese Haliburton and shrewd drafting and signings at the margins, and hired a top coach in Rick Carlisle to run it. In a rarity for the Pacers, they made a splash trade for Pascal Siakam in January 2024 to boost their playoff run.
Houston has emerged as a force in the West this season after trading James Harden in 2021 and rebuilding through the draft under general manager Rafael Stone, nabbing young stars such as Alperen Şengün, Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr. and Tari Eason. In 2023, the Rockets worked free agency to grab Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks as veteran linchpins and added an elite coach in Udoka.
13. Philadelphia (10 points)
The Sixers were a divisive topic, with some voters praising team president Daryl Morey’s creativity and drive and others dismissing his approach to team-building.
“Daryl has balls, but he’s trading stocks from a desk. I don’t think what he does can win at the highest levels,” one executive said.
While his teams have never won a title, Morey has an extensive track record of winning in Houston and Philadelphia and a willingness to ride out uncomfortable situations with the likes of Harden and Ben Simmons. Those earned Philly several votes.
14. Utah Jazz (9 points)
Team president Danny Ainge arrived from Boston in December 2021 and used the 2022 offseason to trade Gobert and Mitchell for a boatload of draft picks, starting Utah on a still-ongoing rebuild. He and general manager Justin Zanik earned plaudits for nabbing Walker Kessler and Lauri Markkanen in the respective trades.
15. Dallas Mavericks (8 points)
President of basketball operations Nico Harrison took over in 2021 and had the Mavs in the NBA Finals in 2024, after executing a series of trades and transactions to reshape the team around Luka Dončić. The Mavs acquired Kyrie Irving, P.J. Washington, Daniel Gafford and Quentin Grimes in trades, added Naji Marshall and Klay Thompson (via sign-and-trade) and drafted Dereck Lively II … all since 2023.
16. Brooklyn Nets (6 points)
Nets general manager Sean Marks has seen this movie before, taking over one of the league’s most hopeless situations in 2016 and getting the Nets into the postseason by 2019, before Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving signed as free agents. Now he is doing it again in the wake of their departures. Marks has accumulated a lot more assets for this round via trades of Durant, Irving and Mikal Bridges, and he might not be done.
17. Milwaukee Bucks (3 points)
Under general manager Jon Horst, the 2021 champions have kept the main thing the main thing, twice extending star Giannis Antetokounmpo while maintaining a core group around him with Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez, Bobby Portis and Pat Connaughton. An opportunistic foray to swap Jrue Holiday for Damian Lillard has been the one recent major swing, although the 2020 trade that netted Holiday in the first place played a massive role in their championship. And while Lillard has played much better in Year 2 with the Bucks, that deal — so far, anyway — has hardly worked out as they’d hoped.
18. Toronto Raptors (2 points)
Toronto was the envy of the league after a series of shrewd moves resulted in a team with no lottery picks winning the title in 2019 — the first time that had happened in 30 years. But the Raptors seem to have lost their way the last few years and are trying to work back into contention. Recent draft picks Scottie Barnes and Gradey Dick and trades for Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett and Ochai Agbaji have rearmed team president Masai Ujiri’s squad with a young nucleus.
T-19. Washington Wizards, Denver Nuggets and LA Clippers (1 point)
Denver won the championship in 2023 and has earned plaudits for its drafting, player development and overall stability, obviously including the steal of the century in 41st pick Nikola Jokić in the 2014 draft (when Connelly was at the Nuggets’ front-office helm). Calvin Booth joined the Nuggets as an assistant general manager in the summer of 2017 and was elevated to the GM role when Connelly left for Minnesota in 2022. Other staffers who helped build their championship team, among them assistant general manager Tommy Balcetis and vice president of basketball operations Ben Tenzer, are still there as well.
Under president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank, the Clippers have seemed to do their best when things look bleakest, such as scratching out a 48-win playoff season the year before Kawhi Leonard and George showed up, or this year’s 14-11 start with George gone and Leonard injured. Owner Steve Ballmer has invested heavily in the front office, thereby affording him the luxury of also having two front-office executives in Trent Redden (general manager) and Mark Hughes (senior vice president/assistant general manager) who have been in the running for GM spots elsewhere.
Said our Clippers voter: “This is going to be controversial because it didn’t work (with Leonard), but those guys are really good.”
The Wizards apparently thought so, too, because they hired Michael Winger from LA in May 2023 to run their own flagging operation. Winger’s down-to-the-studs rebuild is still in its early phases, but the moves (including trading Bradley Beal and Deni Avdija for draft capital) earned enough respect from at least one voter to make the list.
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(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Elsa / Getty Images; Kathy Willens /Associated Press )
