NBA: Top 5 candidates for 2019-20 Executive of the Year
By Phil Watson
If the NBA Coach of the Year has become the domain of the top teams in the NBA, the NBA Executive of the Year is now a 60-wins-or-forget-about-it honor.
The criteria for winning NBA Executive of the Year is simple: It is an annual award given to the league’s best general manager.
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The reality of the award in the modern NBA is that it’s not that simple.
There are several teams that don’t have a general manager making the personnel decisions; you now have presidents of basketball operations, vice presidents of basketball operations and dude with the big b***s who makes the big calls (that last one may or may not exist … at least not on a business card).
Jon Horst of the Milwaukee Bucks won the honor last season for the moves he made in transforming his club from just another middle-of-the-pack team with a great player to a 60-win juggernaut led by now-NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo.
While it’s not unheard of for an executive to win the honor in back-to-back years, it’s only happened once and was more than 30 years ago, when Stan Kasten of the Atlanta Hawks was named NBA Executive of the Year in 1985-86 and again in 1986-87.
The NBA took over the award from The Sporting News in 2009 and the voting is among the executives themselves, so media doesn’t drive the award nearly as much as it does other NBA honors.
But Horst, given that his moves this offseason have been more maintenance than trans-formative, isn’t considered one of the top contenders for a repeat in 2019-20.
Instead, after the wildest offseason in NBA history that didn’t involve a merger, a lockout or an expansion, there are five candidates who enter the season at the top of the list of those executives that might have pressed all the right buttons in July to have a shot at the Larry O’Brien Trophy next June.
None of the five has won the award before and, outside of “best general manager,” the criteria for the honor in recent years has been wins — lots and lots of wins.
There hasn’t been an executive named from a team with fewer than 60 victories since Masai Ujiri of the Denver Nuggets in 2012-13. The last winner from a team with fewer than 50 wins was John Hammond of Milwaukee in 2009-10.
The award has been given out since 1972-73 and there are 11 executives with multiple wins, led by the four won by Jerry Colangelo during his 27 years running the Phoenix Suns.
Two-time winners include Bob Bass (San Antonio Spurs), R.C. Buford (Spurs), Bryan Colangelo (Suns and Toronto Raptors), Wayne Embry (Cleveland Cavaliers), Bob Ferry (Washington Bullets), the aforementioned Kasten, Jerry Krause (Chicago Bulls), Bob Myers (Golden State Warriors), Geoff Petrie (Sacramento Kings … no, really) and Jerry West (Los Angeles Lakers and Memphis Grizzlies).
Here are the top five candidates for NBA Executive of the Year in 2019-20.