Brad Stevens winning Executive of the Year is embarrassing

He dismantled a championship contender to save his boss money and reset the aprons. His team got worse. Don't reward that! Plus: the Pistons suddenly look more like the Pistons.

Good morning. It's Free Newsletter Wednesday. Let's basketball.

Tell me that Brad Stevens, king of the Boston Celtics' front office, is one of the best team executives in the NBA, and you'll get no argument. His work to assemble the 2024 championship team was brilliant, leveraging the Milwaukee Bucks' desperation to land Jrue Holiday, finding his way back to Al Horford, getting Kristaps Porzingis on good value. He retained Payton Pritchard on an under-market deal. Before that, he made the masterstroke move to land Derrick White, a key ingredient to the best versions of the Celtics.

My issue isn't Stevens being lauded for his work with the Celtics. My issue is Stevens being lauded for his work with the Celtics over the past year. It flew under the radar, but Stevens' colleagues awarded him with the Executive of the Year trophy for the second time in three years. He won it in 2023-24, when the C's won 64 games and eventually the title. And he just won it after ... dismantling a title contender to save his new boss a bunch of money and reset the team's apron counters. The Celtics were worse this season than last by five wins, and were just ejected in the first round. They will have the Executive of the Year trophy, the Coach of the Year trophy and a long summer to polish up all those trinkets.

Stevens won the award pretty easily over second place Onsi Saleh of the Hawks and Trajan Langdon of the Pistons. Saleh made the Hawks better over the course of the last year: they won six more games than last year and have another team's lottery pick coming their way. Saleh signed a top contender for Most Improved Player (Nickeil Alexander-Walker) and was able to move beyond the Trae Young era without losing any verve on the court thanks to some heady moves. A worthy Executive of the Year candidate. Langdon didn't make many stirring moves. Or maybe any over the past year, minus bringing Duncan Robinson along for a resuscitation. But the Pistons are a much better team than they were a year ago. That's something!

The obvious candidate this year and every year should be Sam Presti, who won a year ago and finished fifth this season. Presti would finish first every season if his fellow executives were being honest when voting. (This is the only major NBA award not decided by media voters, but by NBA executives.) If you held a GM Draft, everyone in a position of power would pick Presti No. 1 overall without a nanosecond of hesitation.

Here's what Stevens did during this basketball year:

• Drafted Hugo Gonzalez. Good pick at No. 28.
• Traded Jrue Holiday for Anfernee Simons, and later flipped Simons for Nikola Vucevic. Vucevic was a DNP-CD in a Game 7 that Luka Garza started! (This series of trades saved Stevens' boss Tom Chisholm a bunch of money.)
• Traded Kristaps Porzingis for Georges Niang. A month later, Stevens traded two seconds to get Niang off his roster. Porzingis had an awful, unreliable season. But the Celtics ended up getting less than nothing back for him. And before you claim that getting off of Porzingis without giving up a first is good work, remind me who signed Porzingis to his contract. (It was Stevens.)
• Signed Luka Garza and Chris Boucher to replace Porzingis and Al Horford (who left in free agency). Garza is considered one of the worst defensive big men in the league and was thrust into a shockingly important role (including, as mentioned, a surprise start in a Game 7). Boucher did nothing for the team and was thrust into a cost-cutting trade at the deadline.
• Gave the Hornets cash to get off of Xavier Tillman's contract.

That's everything, folks. Cut cut cut cut cut and, uh, drafted Hugo Gonzalez. It's totally reasonable that fellow executives would admire Stevens' work to slash salary bloodlessly because they have all been or will be in that situation at some point. But it should be embarrassing to them and their bosses and the NBA league office and us that this is what constitutes Good Work Worthy Of Metal Praise. The executives should all lament this reality and work to hide the fact that one of their brightest colleagues had to do this! This isn't civic politics. This is high-dollar professional sports. Giving out awards for balanced budgets and reduced tax burden is anathema to competitive athletic competition. Everyone, first and foremost the hypercompetitive Stevens, should be embarrassed about this award.

We know Executive of the Year is the most political award, edging out Most Valuable Player, which has become a group consensus-building exercise over the course of three or four months. Further proof of that reality? The GM who made the greatest trade in 50 years (at least), Rob Pelinka of the Lakers, received a single third-place vote this year after finishing sixth last season. Pelinka took over a bad Lakers team in 2019 that had LeBron and some interesting young pieces, built an overnight champion and kept the team competitive into LeBron's 40s by drafting well (Austin Reaves), cutting bait on players before they became pumpkins (Kyle Kuzma), canny work around the edges (Rui Hachimura, Marcus Smart) and making the greatest trade in at least 50 years (Luka Doncic). He gets no credit for any of it because a) it's the Lakers and it's assumed they have an unfair advantage despite being run like a legacy family-owned furniture store for decades and b) no team that bilked Nico Harrison will ever get credit for that deal because it was such a stain on Harrison himself.

Pelinka isn't always worthy of consideration and has had a mixed record overall. But it's a little ridiculous that he made his team three wins better despite a tricky salary cap situation and received one third-place vote and Stevens made his team appreciably worse in a tricky salary cap situation and won the damn trophy. What is the job, exactly? It's bad enough that so many fans now cosplay as penny-sensitive general managers. We don't need general managers cosplaying as cheapstake owners when voting to honor their own.

Now That Looks Like Detroit

Cavaliers 101, Pistons 111 (DET leads 1-0)

Five notes from Game 1 of the Phil Hubbard Series.

• Facing the nasty, strong Orlando frontcourt – flawed as it is – is much different than facing the talented but far less gnarly Cleveland frontcourt – great as it is. So it's really little surprise that Jalen Duren, despite another quiet scoring effort, looked more like Jalen Duren. Seven offensive rebounds, two blocks and a team-best +17 in 35 minutes. Progress after Wendell Carter Jr. ate his lunch much of the last series. Jarrett Allen, just off his Game 7 heroics, was totally neutralized.
• Credit the Cavaliers, who elicit so much less faith as soon as Pitbull announces the arrival of the playoffs than they do during the regular season, for storming back and tying the game in the fourth. They were down as many as 18 in the second half and 11 in the fourth, but tied it up on three James Harden free throws, followed by a missed chance to take the lead on a Harden floater. You don't think of the Playoff Cavs as a come-from-behind team, so that was encouraging at least.
• But getting into clutch games with the Pistons and particularly Cade Cunningham is a real bad idea. Almost always in control.

• Cleveland is now 4-12 on the road in the playoffs in the Donovan Mitchell era. Two of those wins were in that unholy series against Miami last year. They are 11-7 at home. They need to learn how to win some of these road games or they are never making the Finals unless they win home court every round (didn't help last year) and never lose at home.
• James Harden this postseason: 49 made field goals, 49 made free throws, 50 assists and 43 turnovers. And yet: he has a positive plus-minus when on the court for the first time in four postseasons. What a conundrum.

Springtime for Holmgren

Lakers 90, Thunder 108 (OKC leads 1-0)

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

• set a playoff career-high in turnovers (7),
• didn't score 20 points (the streak doesn't carry over to the playoffs, it's fine), and
• only took three free throws.

Jalen Williams is also still out. LeBron had a phenomenal performance (an efficient 27-4-6). And yet: the Thunder win by 18. A big reason: Chet Holmgren might be ready for his virtuosic solo.

He might end up on third team All-NBA and should be on All-Defense, and he was an All-Star, so you could call this a breakout season for Chet. But it's never really felt like that. Maybe now's the time for it.

I can confirm that this video does not contain any gross images. It does contain Jalen Williams and Jared McCain looking horrified when they see Jarred Vanderbilt's finger.

Pass!

Speaking of McCain: 12 points in 15 minutes on seven FGAs. Pretty good.

Schedule

All times Eastern.

Sixers at Knicks, 7, ESPN (NYK leads 1-0)
Timberwolves at Spurs, 9:30, ESPN (MIN leads 1-0)

Be excellent to each other.