As longtime readers might remember, I rank the NBA’s front offices twice a year: Once around the trade deadline and then once again in the offseason. This time, we’re tweaking the formula slightly by splitting it into two parts. We’ll begin today with the top 15 front offices in the NBA. The bottom 15 are coming later in the week.
Since we’re focusing on the best front offices today, let’s try to define what exactly makes a great front office in 2026. There are a number of obvious qualifications, of course. Make smart trades. Draft good players. Sign team-friendly contracts. Hire the right coaches. That’s all surface-level stuff. Dig deeper and these are the traits that separate the two halves of these rankings:
- Having a coherent plan. It’s one thing to accidentally land on a handful of good players. It’s another to operate with an identifiable and logically consistent plan in which moves work together in sequence towards the eventual goal of winning an NBA championship.
- Creativity. A great front office tries things that are unexpected and attempts to get ahead of trends rather than responding to them.
- Malleability. You can win a championship by doing one thing right if you do enough of it. The best front offices, the ones that win consistently, can build in a variety of different ways.
- Being self-aware. A great front office understands where the team sits in the broader NBA landscape and operates accordingly. It is willing to make hard, unpopular decisions in service of its greater goals.
- The organization is fully aligned. There is a clear and defined hierarchy in which everyone knows who is making decisions. The coach acts in accordance with the general manager’s plan.
- The owner is willing to spend money. This is not just a matter of player salaries in the apron era, but of everything else it takes to build a top-notch organization.
The basic purpose of this exercise is to determine which front offices you would want to run your favorite team if you could make that choice. Our final note, as always, and one that I will especially emphasize now that we’re splitting this list into two parts, is that there are more well-run teams than poorly run teams. There are going to be smart teams that don’t make the top 15. In many cases, their placement is due to a limited sample size or a couple of recent misses and will be explained in more depth once we get there. The reality, though, is that most of the NBA is run very well and the gap between most of the teams outside of the top or bottom handful is relatively small. So, with all of that stated, let’s start ranking.
1. Oklahoma City Thunder
February ranking: 1
There’s little I can say about Sam Presti that hasn’t already been stated. He’s a Hall of Fame executive who does virtually everything at an elite level. He’s drafted three MVPs and traded for another. He’s stockpiled draft picks as effectively as any general manager in history and deployed them in virtually every possible manner, from opportunistically swiping talented players away from other teams (Jared McCain) to converting low-upside picks into high-upside swaps (as they did with the Mavericks at the 2024 deadline) to simply drafting and developing good players to replace older, more expensive ones.
The Thunder successfully signed a high-impact, big-money free agent (Isaiah Hartenstein) at a point in history when basically nobody ever does. Virtually all of their contracts are team-friendly. Many include team options and non-guarantees, concessions that players tend to be willing to make given Oklahoma City’s player-friendly reputation. Even their mistakes work out in the long run. They should’ve drafted Franz Wagner over Josh Giddey … but Josh Giddey got them Alex Caruso.
The Thunder are so good at team-building that they even managed to turn this summer’s apron-induced cost-cutting into a reasonably productive endeavor. Notice that two of the players they traded away, Lu Dort and Aaron Wiggins, went to the Atlanta Hawks. Well, Oklahoma City’s chief rivals, the San Antonio Spurs, control Atlanta’s 2027 first-round pick, so the Thunder want the Hawks to be good. They used the financial flexibility those trades created to sign Spencer Jones to an offer sheet that pushed the Denver Nuggets into the second apron. Presti misses no opportunity, however obscure, to better his team’s position.
2. New York Knicks
February ranking: 7
For the first time in the brief history of these rankings, the Boston Celtics do not occupy the No. 2 position. Making the leap are the defending NBA champion New York Knicks. The only thing keeping the Knicks out of the top three in prior rankings was the fear that they bet on the wrong stars. Spending five first-round picks on Mikal Bridges, on paper, was an overpay. Karl-Anthony Towns, at times, looked like a bloated contract that reportedly held minimal trade value. They went all-in. That meant that the team they built needed to be good enough. Obviously, it was.
Now, Leon Rose is responsible for one of the most incredible feats of team-building in NBA history. The Knicks just created an NBA champion without drafting a single starter. The only other champion to do so was the 2019-20 Los Angeles Lakers, who signed LeBron James in free agency, who, in turn, recruited Anthony Davis to force a trade to join him. The Knicks were built around a former second-round pick and his college friends. Jalen Brunson, at the very least, now stands as one of the five greatest free-agent signings in NBA history. Towns and OG Anunoby qualify as preposterous trade heists.
Even the Bridges trade stands out now as a sort of calculated irresponsibility. They didn’t trade five first-round picks for a wing who’s never made an All-Star Team. They traded five first-round picks for the specific player and contract they decided they needed to win a championship. Then they won that championship. It’s simultaneously the sort of risk a lot of teams are going to be forced to take if they plan to catch up to the Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs, given the head starts those teams have, and one that almost none of them will ever be able to justify. It gets you the trophy or it gets you fired. Rose is fearless. He fired his head coach after reaching Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, and it worked.
The big stuff gets the headlines, but the Knicks also thrive on the margins. Their contracts are a thing of beauty, and that extends far beyond Brunson’s now-legendary discount. They have been pioneers in the recent proliferation of team options and descending-annual-value contracts. Virtually everyone on their bench makes below market value and has meaningful non-guarantees in their deals. They’re always stuffed to the brim with second-round picks, which is how they so freely add players like Jose Alvarado at the deadline. They drafted Immanuel Quickley at No. 25 and Deuce McBride at No. 36.
You could find some minor quibbles. Owner James Dolan was reportedly heavily involved in the decision to fire Tom Thibodeau, and in general, he seems to participate more in basketball decisions than you’d like. Contrary to Dolan’s beliefs, going into the second apron does not need to be “suicidal.” There are moments when doing so makes sense, and if not doing so is a blanket policy long-term, it could create real issues for New York. There’s also the sustainability question that comes with building a team around the relationships of a former agent. Eventually, Rose is going to run out of former clients to pursue. But the front office he has built has a virtually impeccable track record right now. The Knicks get basically everything right, and now they have a title to show for it.
3. Boston Celtics
February ranking: 2
The Celtics, as covered above, have ranked No. 2 on every published version of this list. I was on the fence about dropping them after the Finals, and the Jaylen Brown trade clinched it. I think the Brown trade represents a miscalculation on four notable fronts:
- They didn’t get enough to justify pulling the trigger. “The best offer” and “an offer good enough to accept” are two completely different scales. We’re talking about a team that just won 56 games a year ago with Jayson Tatum playing in only 16 of them. The Tatum-Brown duo reached five conference finals in eight healthy years. In pure basketball terms, running it back made more sense than making this trade.
- They should have made this deal in September instead of July if they were dead set on making it. Why rush? Maybe someone would have circled back on Brown after missing out on someone else. Maybe an owner would have pushed for a deal behind the scenes. The trade was simply rushed. The logic behind rushing was presumably to avoid Brown’s extension eligibility in late July. In theory, electing not to extend someone of Brown’s caliber signals an intent to trade. That can impact a player’s trade market, but it’s not as though Brown’s could have fallen much further, and if it had, they could have just kept him.
- If they weren’t committed to the Tatum-Brown duo, they should have traded Brown last summer to trigger a gap year. His value presumably would have been higher at that point, and we know they were offered the draft pick that became Collin Murray-Boyles for Derrick White. They could have restocked their asset cupboard and added a lottery pick in a great draft. Brad Stevens cited Brown’s usage and contract as motivators in the deal, but he was on the same contract a year ago, and his playing style hasn’t notably changed.
- If something changed within the past year that changed their stance on keeping Tatum and Brown together, then they deserve some blame for letting that happen. This can’t be as simple as “Brown wanted his own team” because he wound up on one of the few teams that will give him the ball less than Boston. If the Giannis Antetokounmpo negotiations were a breaking point here, then they either failed by not putting enough on the table to secure that deal or by getting suckered into a negotiation with a team that was only using them as leverage against its preferred trading partner.
The Celtics are still going to win a lot of regular-season games. In a sense, this trade represents Boston tripling down on its preferred playing style. The Celtics want to launch 3s and minimize turnovers. That’s Paul George to a tee. It’s not Jaylen Brown. Boston is going all-in on Mazzulla-ball, and Mazzulla-ball is arguably the most reliable regular-season formula in basketball.
Yet the cost of doing so was amplifying their existing flaws. Brad Stevens spoke openly after Boston’s first-round exit about its need to generate more rim pressure. Well, Brown provided their rim pressure last season. He defended opposing star wings, and they already lacked someone to guard the Tyrese Maxeys of the world, unless Jordan Walsh takes another step. George remains a strong help-defender, but their on-ball defense just got worse. So much of winning in the playoffs boils down to guarding your man and making tough shots. Brown does that more than George does.
Right now, I do not consider the Celtics viable championship contenders, nor do I think they see themselves as such. The success or failure of the Brown trade will depend on how they pivot. Once George’s contract is closer to expiration, they will have opportunities to convert it with the draft picks they already had and just got into a player or players who can get them back into the championship picture. If they manage to do so, they’ll remain near the top of future rankings. If they can’t, they’re going to start slipping.
That stated, I still ranked Boston No. 3, which means we should still address the things the Celtics do well. The single trait that sets Boston apart from other front offices is its ability to identify undervalued, existing NBA talent. Getting Derrick White for a single pick is the obvious example, but seeing a future starter in Neemias Queta after just 20 games with the Sacramento Kings is another notable one.
They, by and large, do well with their late draft picks as well. Memes about Hugo Gonzalez and Baylor Scheierman holding up an Antetokounmpo trade aside, they were both great picks in the late 20s, and few teams are as good about locking these diamonds in the rough into team-friendly contracts as the Celtics are. Payton Pritchard is not one of the 200 highest-paid players in the NBA this season, and Queta and Walsh both signed value extensions this summer. The Celtics, like the Knicks, tend to nail the margins. But the Knicks got their big moves right, and for now, it feels like the Celtics got theirs wrong. Time will tell if that proves true, but for now, that was the difference in New York’s ascent.
4. San Antonio Spurs
February ranking: 4
The Spurs are exceptionally well-managed. They are also exceptionally lucky. They’ve been so lucky that the NBA literally changed the rules to prevent anyone else from repeating their lottery success. But you can be both lucky and smart. If the Spurs do indeed win championships in the years to come, luck will be the single biggest reason. It just won’t be the only reason.
They’ve replicated OKC’s infinite draft pick scheme better than anyone else in the NBA, altering it slightly by prioritizing first-round swaps to try to set themselves up for as many bites at the lottery apple as possible. They own four of them in the next five drafts with an eye on using them to replace role players as they get expensive to compensate for the rising salaries of their young core. Of course, that young core figures to be a bit cheaper than it should be. The Spurs convinced Victor Wembanyama not to take a Rose Rule bump on his next contract, holding his starting salary to 25% of the cap. The core of their last dynasty all took discounts, and, at the very least, the Spurs deserve credit for maintaining a culture in which players are eager to do so.
If Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper take similar haircuts, stomaching the four-year max deal they owe De’Aaron Fox gets a lot easier. That Fox deal is an overpay, but the degree of disaster it represents is pretty overstated, especially if those other discounts are coming. The Spurs wouldn’t have made the Finals last year without Fox and could have won the championship if he hadn’t been playing on one healthy ankle. They traded for him before they got Harper, and on any other team, there would be little question about his place as a starter. He was an All-Star last season. They probably should trade him if the chance presents itself, but if it doesn’t, they’ve positioned themselves well to absorb a single overpay.
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After all, they just turned an undrafted free agent (Julian Champagnie) into a starter on a Finals team. They drafted two centers in the first round to prepare for the moment a pricey backup center like Luke Kornet becomes an unaffordable luxury. The first of those centers, Jayden Quaintance, was a particularly notable home run swing. Few teams were asset-rich enough to take the sort of risk his health poses, but the Spurs were, and if they can get his body right, he was a high-lottery talent who fell to No. 20. Devin Vassell and Carter Bryant have both outperformed their draft slot.
These are all supplementary moves, of course, but when you land three stars in three consecutive lotteries, those are the moves that matter. The Wembanyama-Castle-Harper trio virtually guaranteed contention, but the Spurs deserve more credit than they tend to get for the steps they’ve taken to both support that trio and prepare it for a prolonged championship window.
5. Utah Jazz
February ranking: 8
The Jazz have been in the top 10 of every front office rankings I’ve published, and they tend to be a fairly criticized choice. But Danny Ainge’s championship track record matters, and the plan here is coming to fruition. Give him credit for this above all else: he never deviates. He makes the moves he wants to make without getting swayed by internal pressure or external noise.
On paper, a four-year tank is overkill, but if that’s what it took to get a franchise player, that’s what Ainge was determined to do. It didn’t matter if the league fined him for it or if his teams flashed low-upside competitiveness. He thinks big-picture and knew all of this would be for nothing without a franchise player. The hope is that he has one in Darryn Peterson, and as ugly as it was at times, taking those four years of lumps was worth it for a prospect of that caliber. Speaking of never deviating, remember how Peterson’s agency, which also represents Keyonte George, reportedly didn’t want him in Utah? Ainge didn’t care. He didn’t care that Ace Bailey wanted to be drafted by the Washington Wizards either.
The Los Angeles Lakers spent years trying to trade for Walker Kessler. Ainge didn’t budge until they could give him what he felt was an appropriate package. Two unprotected picks, two unprotected swaps and no matching salary is an absolute haul for a non-All-Star. That’s more than the Celtics got for Jaylen Brown or the Los Angeles Clippers got for Kawhi Leonard (assuming that deal goes through). The Jazz will eventually need to find a Kessler replacement, but hey, it’s not like they lack the assets to do so. They’re among the most asset-rich teams in basketball again despite trading for Jaren Jackson Jr., who can be a small-ball center in closing lineups anyway.
The draft record, headlined by George, looks better now than it did a year ago. Brice Sensabaugh, Isaiah Collier and Kyle Filipowski are useful backups. Will Hardy was a home run hire, and, assuming the core stays healthy, he’ll prove that this year now that he’s allowed to win. They’re still a few years away from genuine contention, but depending on how you classify Jackson, the Jazz have either a former All-Star in his 20s or a very desirable young prospect on a rookie deal at all five positions to go along with their stash of draft picks from the Lakers. That’s an extremely enviable position, one well worth the four-year wait.
6. Indiana Pacers
February ranking: 6
A notable trend at the top of this list is that most of the teams we’ve covered have made at least one notable move that, whether in the moment or in hindsight, has proven enormously unpopular. For Boston, it was the Jaylen Brown trade. For San Antonio, it was the De’Aaron Fox contract. For Indiana, it’s the Ivica Zubac trade. Losing the No. 5 overall pick for a non-All-Star looks very bad on paper, yet in practice, I think it’s a great example of the sort of calculated irresponsibility the Knicks displayed with the Bridges trade.
The Pacers had to get a center. They had no chance of competing for another Finals berth without someone this good. You can criticize Indiana for its historical reluctance to pay the tax, but ultimately, the contract Myles Turner got from the Milwaukee Bucks was bad. They were smart not to match it, yet they still had to replace it. The center market has gotten out of hand in the last year. Kessler is a worse player than Zubac, but still got two firsts and two swaps. Zubac came with the advantage of a below-market contract. They just were not going to get a center of this caliber without paying a substantial price.
So they designed this trade around the degree of risk they were willing to tolerate. They would not chance giving up a top-four pick in a draft with four star-level prospects. They could, however, risk giving up the No. 5 pick, because the prospects who went fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth were all point guards. They have Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard and T.J. McConnell. This would have been the worst possible draft for them to pick No. 5.
They attempted to cash in on the perceived value of their high draft pick by concocting a trade that only risked the portion of it that wasn’t nearly as valuable to them. They lost that coin flip. If they’d won it, they’d be hailed as geniuses. We’re evaluating process here more than results, and in their specific circumstances, the process was reasonable. They protected themselves in the ways that they absolutely needed to, even if the ways they didn’t have the potential for some bad publicity.
This is still a front office that built a Finals roster without a single top-five pick. The Pacers are the best second-draft team in the NBA, securing Haliburton, Obi Toppin and Aaron Nesmith during their rookie contracts from teams that didn’t understand how valuable they could be. They are the master of the mid-sized contract, as their books are always stuffed with good players making between $10 million and $20 million. That’s the benefit of re-signing players as early as they tend to, and it not only leaves the Pacers perpetually deep but flexible for trading purposes if needed.
If a front office’s greatest sin is overpaying for a center at a point in league history in which everyone else is overpaying for centers, it is probably doing something right. The willingness to pay the tax is a bigger question. The Pacers are over the line for next season now. If ducking the tax ever seriously hurts their championship outlook, that will factor more prominently into future rankings.
7. Memphis Grizzlies
February ranking: 11
Zach Kleiman is perhaps the NBA’s best drafter not named Presti. Desmond Bane and Santi Aldama at No. 30, GG Jackson at No. 45, Jaylen Wells at No. 39, Cam Spencer at No. 53 and Cedric Coward at No. 11 all represent significant wins relative to their slots. His only especially notable miss was trading up for Ziaire Williams, only to watch Trey Murphy land in his original slot. Scotty Pippen Jr. and Jay Huff both developed into real NBA players as Memphis’ two-way signings. The ability to identify and develop young talent is the single most important trait a small-market front office can have, and the Grizzlies have it in spades.
They are also appropriately unsentimental. The moment they realized the Bane-Jaren Jackson Jr.-Ja Morant core was not capable of seriously contending, they broke it up and got a premium for two of them. They didn’t get greedy with Morant either. Lesser front offices would have pretended the situation was salvageable in the hopes of eventually getting positive value. The Grizzlies prioritized their culture enough to understand that just getting Morant out of the building was enough. Morant publicly challenged the coach, and the front office was secure enough to stand alongside that first-year coach rather than the beloved homegrown star. That’s strong organizational alignment.
Still, the transition from Taylor Jenkins to Tuomas Iisalo could have been handled better. A March coach firing is messy, and considering the staff overhauls the front office demanded in that offseason, it’s worth wondering why they didn’t just fire Jenkins then. Similarly, their supposed determination not to bring Dillon Brooks back under any circumstances looks questionable now that he’s become a transformational cultural figure for two different organizations. Even if the decisions made sense in a vacuum, they were handled pretty clumsily.
There’s also the question of track record. Look at the first six teams we covered: the last three NBA champions, the last two runners-up in the Finals, and a former championship GM who laid the foundation for Boston’s 2024 title. The Grizzlies haven’t advanced beyond the second round under Kleiman, and their win-now moves (notably the Marcus Smart trade) weren’t as successful as their rebuilding maneuvers. Still, that’s a small track record, and many of Kleiman’s more ambitious star pursuits were ruined by the market the Grizzlies play in. That’s what makes their draft surplus so tantalizing. The Grizzlies have the picks now to build an organic juggernaut.
8. Houston Rockets
February ranking: 3
No team does a better job negotiating contracts than the Rockets. They got Alperen Sengun to re-sign for less than the max when inferior peers have gotten the full 25%. They seem to be taking the same approach with Amen Thompson, and they convinced Kevin Durant to take a pay cut upon joining them last offseason. They essentially negotiated Tari Eason down to the mid-level exception after talks reportedly topped $100 million last offseason. They structure their contracts wisely. Dorian Finney-Smith had no guaranteed money beyond the second season on his deal, making him dumpable this offseason. They baked a second-year dip into Jabari Smith’s contract to help handle the lone season in which he, Sengun, Thompson and Durant would all be on market-rate deals.
They’re creative in how they structure trades as well. The hidden genius of their decision to trade the Brooklyn Nets control of their own 2025 and 2026 picks back following the Mikal Bridges deal was that it incentivized the Nets to be bad in that stretch, likely increasing the value of the 2027 first-round pick the Rockets still controlled. Their 2021 PJ Tucker deal is another lost gem mostly because of its unspectacular result. The Rockets wanted control over Milwaukee’s 2023 first-round pick to take advantage of its aging roster, but the Bucks couldn’t trade it because of the Stepien Rule. However, the Rockets themselves controlled Milwaukee’s 2022 pick, so to sidestep the Stepien Rule, they sent it back to the Bucks along with Tucker to get Milwaukee’s 2021 and 2023 picks. It was a cool idea that just didn’t amount to much.
As much good as there is here, there are also real questions. The Rockets made four top-four picks in four years and didn’t get a single All-Star out of it. That could still change, with Thompson offering the most optimism, but imagine how we’d feel about Utah’s rebuild without Peterson. Sengun is an All-Star drafted in the same slot as Keyonte George, but none of this means anything without a true franchise player. The Rockets, for now, don’t have one. Both Sengun and Thompson appeared to have that sort of upside a year ago. Today, they look unlikely to live up to it. If that doesn’t change, the Rockets will have to go out and trade for that player.
The Rockets also have a bit of organizational tunnel vision. They were at the forefront of the NBA’s shift toward size and rebounding, but they clearly over-index on it. Their half-court offensive process is a mess, and Ime Udoka leans far too heavily into defense and size in his lineup decisions. That poses the question of organizational alignment. Rafael Stone used a No. 3 overall pick on Reed Sheppard and Udoka seems hesitant to use him. This season will be a major test in that regard. Fred VanVleet is back and Marcus Smart is here now. If the Rockets can’t find the appropriate balance between their stylistic preferences and the needs those preferences create, they’re probably going to be capped as a first- or second-round out even with VanVleet and Steven Adams back in the fold.
9. Charlotte Hornets
February ranking: 12
The LaMelo Ball trade is one of the boldest things a relatively inexperienced front office has ever done. Most owners and general managers experiencing a 40-24 stretch after years of losing would cling to it for dear life. The Hornets understood it was probably fool’s gold. Ball makes far more sense in a secondary role in Minnesota than he did as Charlotte’s centerpiece, where his skill set was redundant and his durability, maturity and defensive concerns stood out more. Trading away a beloved franchise player after such a run represents complete organizational alignment. Nobody here is satisfied with a fun March. The Hornets will settle for nothing less than genuine championship contention.
Jeff Peterson has done an incredible job of accumulating assets. Charlotte currently has arguably the most impressive collection of external draft picks in all of basketball. The Miles Bridges trade was an absolute heist, and Peterson has been smart to consistently target the notoriously impatient Phoenix Suns as a vulnerable trading partner.
Peterson’s first draft went poorly. Tidjane Salaun looks like a miss at No. 6. But he nailed 2025. Kon Knueppel was by no means an obvious selection at No. 4 overall, but thus far, he looks like far and away the best player available to them at that slot. Sion James at No. 33 and Ryan Kalkbrenner at No. 35 are both already usable NBA rotation players. Moussa Diabaté wasn’t a draft pick, but he was one of the best margin finds any team has made over the past few years.
Charlotte took a conscious step back this offseason, and the Hornets did so at the perfect time. They stand to benefit substantially from lottery reform as a competent team in a suddenly loaded Eastern Conference. It will take a few years for their vision to come together, and they’ll probably need another star-level talent in there somewhere to supplement Knueppel and Brandon Miller. But the Hornets have the tools, and perhaps more importantly, the ambition, to give that promising duo a real chance to compete for titles down the line. This is about as high as I’m comfortable ranking a front office with no playoff appearances.
10. Minnesota Timberwolves
February ranking: 10
Tim Connelly has perhaps the most interesting track record to critique of any general manager in basketball. You can find serious fault with basically all of his big decisions.
He paid the Mikal Bridges price for Rudy Gobert without getting the Mikal Bridges championship result. If anything, you could argue Connelly paid more, since Walker Kessler, whom he’d already drafted, turned into a cheaper facsimile of Gobert. He traded Karl-Anthony Towns in part because of apron issues he created himself with the Gobert trade. Now, Towns is a champion in New York and Julius Randle was cap dumped this offseason. The Rob Dillingham trade was an unmitigated disaster. Connelly effectively just bet the Anthony Edwards era on a co-star in LaMelo Ball that Charlotte was eager to move. Though it wasn’t quite as Earth-shattering and it was somewhat rectified by the Ayo Dosunmu acquisition, letting Nickeil Alexander-Walker leave stings as well. All of this is valid. If you want to plunge Minnesota down your own personal list because of it, be my guest.
Yet no team seems to outperform expectations in the postseason as consistently as Minnesota does. The Timberwolves, in the simplest of terms, feel built for the playoffs. Maybe that’s a function of Connelly being early on the NBA’s supersizing trend, or maybe the Timberwolves are just better at identifying two-month players than the rest of the league. We’ll have a better sense of the answer after we see how this smaller version of the team holds up next spring. But Connelly built the bulk of Denver’s 2023 championship team, and his 2024 Timberwolves were championship-caliber before some bad shooting variance doomed them in the Western Conference Finals. He has a real track record.
You don’t win championships by accident. It’s better to be too aggressive than too passive. That’s especially true in this particular era. The Spurs and Thunder have overwhelming advantages in talent, youth and draft capital over the field. They cannot be caught by traditional means. Connelly’s high-risk, high-reward approach is really the only path Minnesota has to catching them, and even if the Ball deal could go wrong in a dozen different ways, the chance of it going right is just about the only thing that could have realistically given the Wolves a chance in the West.
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Being as perpetually asset-poor as the Wolves tend to be as a result of Connelly’s aggression is tricky, but they’ve been good enough at identifying hidden gems that they can get away with it. They lost Alexander-Walker, but they found him first. Bones Hyland is another recent win. They’re not Indiana, but they’re up there with almost anyone else in terms of second-drafting. Give them some credit when it comes to evaluating internally as well. They held onto Jaden McDaniels for dear life, but cut bait on Dillingham after less than two years. Connelly isn’t perfect, but now that we’ve hit the range of strong-yet-flawed front offices, Minnesota stands out for having the right sort of flaws.
11. Miami Heat
February ranking: 14
This isn’t quite the case now that they’ve traded away most of their draft picks, but when lottery reform passed, I argued that the Heat were among the biggest winners. They were philosophically opposed to tanking in a way that was ultimately detrimental. Well, tanking isn’t an option now. Yet Miami’s organizational refusal to properly rebuild is a genuine flaw. It simply isn’t responsible to take any form of roster-building off the table entirely, purely out of competitive vigor.
Miami’s track record is legendary. Pat Riley has had the Heat in or around the championship picture for the better part of three decades, and their entire organization works in lockstep. They put “Heat Culture” on the jerseys; there’s no question about the team’s philosophy. It’s just fair to wonder if Riley’s approach, centered on external star-acquisition at all costs, is a bit outdated. They were so fixated on getting a Giannis Antetokounmpo-level player that they never stopped to wonder if their perpetual Play-In roster was actually good enough to win with him.
Whether or not the Heat actually win that trade, they certainly lost the negotiation. They gave the Milwaukee Bucks virtually everything they could have plausibly offered. Knowing what we know now about the sort of rebuild the Bucks wanted and what Jaylen Brown’s trade market looked like, it seems as though the Bucks viewed the Celtics as more of a scare tactic against the Heat than a viable trade partner in their own right. Star-level talent is and always will be necessary, yet it is less important today than it has ever been. The name of the game now is depth and versatility.
The Heat simply do not have the shooting or the shot-creation to genuinely contend in their current state, and they may not have the tools to get it. They made an era-defining bet on the health and continued dominance of a soon-to-be-32-year-old with recurring calf issues and left themselves little room to pivot if it goes poorly. There is a very good chance that in two or three years, we look back on Miami’s 2026 offseason believing they would have been better off trading Bam Adebayo and rebooting instead of adding Antetokounmpo.
If you’re looking for a point of comparison, consider Miami’s two-time Finals opponent, San Antonio. The two share several organizational similarities, most notably their history of winning and their renowned cultures. The Spurs built their current contender on luck, but fortune favors the prepared. The Spurs were only in a position to get lucky in the lottery in the first place because they proactively decided they needed to rebuild. They were willing to defy their organizational norms in ways the Heat have never been comfortable doing.
There’s still plenty to praise here. The Heat made the Finals three years ago with five undrafted free agents in their rotation. They’re among the very best organizations in basketball when it comes to developing players, and that’s what their Antetokounmpo era championship equity is relying on. Few teams have ever been better about creating cap flexibility out of thin air, and front-loading Andrew Wiggins’ contract seems to be their plan for doing so next offseason. They did practically everything right for decades, but the NBA is changing under their feet, and now they have to prove that they are capable of changing with it.
12. Cleveland Cavaliers
February ranking: 5
The Donovan Mitchell trade hasn’t led to a Finals berth, but this is arguably the most successful sustained period in franchise history that doesn’t involve LeBron James. Turning a trade that was perceived as a potential two-year rental into a 64-win regular-season and a conference finals appearance qualifies as a victory. Cleveland’s track record of discovering hidden gems is becoming undeniable. Sam Merrill has become one of the NBA’s best shooters. Ty Jerome’s per-minute production is so absurd it practically breaks the all-in-one metrics. Jaylon Tyson looks like a great pick at No. 28 overall, and one of the standouts of Summer League was Cleveland’s No. 34 overall pick, Meleek Thomas.
Dan Gilbert’s money is an underrated weapon. The Cavaliers were the only team to spend into the second apron last season, and they consistently went deep into the tax during the James era. Gilbert has never let the desire not to pay multiple head coaches stop him from firing one. Cleveland has been a pretty notable incubator of front-office talent over the past decade or two. The Philadelphia 76ers just hired Mike Gansey away from Cleveland to run its basketball operations. Brock Aller, New York’s strategic mastermind, came from Cleveland, as did Clippers general manager Trent Redden. The amount Cleveland invests in every facet of its organization from players to executives is a major strategic advantage.
The James Harden acquisition itself probably won’t age all that well. Getting him helped Cleveland reach the conference finals, but lowered the long-term ceiling. Time will probably be kinder to the decision not to pay Darius Garland, though. I just ranked the NBA’s worst contracts, and one-third of my list was comprised of guards 6-foot-5 or shorter in their late-20s making max money. Given his injury history, moving Garland before they needed to pay him made sense. If there was a major sin here, it was waiting too long to pull the trigger. There was a time when Cleveland probably could have turned Garland into a haul of picks or the high-level wing they still need.
This is the Cavaliers’ biggest organizational weakness. Since building the Mitchell-led version of their team, they have allowed themselves to get a bit too attached to the status quo. They waited too long to trade Garland, and seemingly only did so at Mitchell’s behest since he reportedly wanted Harden. They’re never known to have come close to moving Jarrett Allen, who is about to get more expensive. They gave Mitchell a no-questions-asked 35% max contract extension this offseason while they’re already paying Evan Mobley 30% of the cap. This entire era of Cavaliers basketball has been premised on tinkering around the edges of a core that may or may not be good enough. If it isn’t, the next few years are going to be rough, because the money they now owe to that core severely restricts the sort of supporting talent they can add to supplement it.
13. Atlanta Hawks
February ranking: 13
Atlanta’s draft night trade with New Orleans a year ago was an incredible process with an unfortunate result. Much as we’d think about Indiana differently if their Ivica Zubac coin flip led to a top-four pick, we’d be thinking about Atlanta pretty differently if the No. 8 pick had instead landed in the top four. The Hawks made a great decision, one that several teams in front of them presumably elected not to make, and were punished for it with some unfortunate luck.
Their other big move last offseason, nabbing Most Improved Player Nickeil Alexander-Walker for just above the mid-level exception, was a home run. Like Charlotte, Atlanta deserves credit for moving off of an enormously popular franchise player. It’s not quite the same, since the Hawks waited longer, didn’t get draft capital, and already had proof of concept of their post-Trae Young team thanks to his injury-induced absence, but it was bold nonetheless. There is a lot of similarity between those two relatively new front offices.
The Hawks just have a few marks against them that Charlotte doesn’t. If Dyson Daniels is going to be a complete non-shooter, then his four-year, $100 million contract looks like an overpay. The difference between the 19% he shot from deep last season and the 34% he hit in the 2024-25 campaign is the difference between a good and a bad contract. We have no real draft track record to go off of (Kingston Flemings will be informative here), and while they’ve done a great job of stacking expiring contracts for a trade, they haven’t cashed those chips in yet.
Most of what Atlanta’s front office has done to this point has been good. Getting Lu Dort and Aaron Wiggins for second-round picks was a no-brainer. Keeping CJ McCollum and Jock Landale on mid-sized one-year deals made sense as well. Their books are preposterously clean, even if Daniels is overpaid. They don’t currently have any of the 60 highest-paid players in the NBA. But this is still a middle-of-the-road Eastern Conference team. We can’t push the Hawks much higher until we see how they plan to use this flexibility they’ve generated.
14. Philadelphia 76ers
February ranking: 9
Let’s address the elephant in the room here: how did the 76ers move down five spots after having the best 2026 offseason of any NBA team? The answer is a mistake on my part. I’ve been too high on Philadelphia throughout the history of these rankings in deference to Daryl Morey’s strong track record in Houston. While I would still contend he’s a good general manager and has received too much blame for what had gone wrong in the past, there were clear missteps on the margins that I didn’t judge harshly enough.
So, onto the current front office. In short, there is a distinction to be drawn between a team having a great offseason and a team having a great front office. The former can be pretty circumstantial. The latter is process-driven and proves itself over time. I liken the Jaylen Brown trade to the Luka Dončić trade in this respect. It’s a great trade that I’m not sure represents great front office work. How much credit does a team really deserve when a competitor presents them with a deal that seems wildly below-market and came with ostensibly questionable process?
The answer is “some.” They didn’t screw it up. They didn’t bungle the negotiation. But it’s not as though that trade was something this front office built for intentionally. Brown fell in their laps, and that led to LeBron James. Getting arguably the greatest player ever for the minimum is an enormous organizational win, but still a pretty circumstantial one. It doesn’t happen if Boston handles the Brown situation differently. Hell, it doesn’t even happen if the Knicks had lost in the Finals. James’ agent stated as much on the record. The 76ers had a great offseason that was defined largely by stars aligning. It’s simply too early to say that this is an elite front office, even if they did mostly nail the stuff it could control.
On paper, though, there’s a lot to like about the construction of this front office. Mike Gansey was renowned for his ability to identify talent in Cleveland, which should balance out nicely with Bob Myers in an oversight role. Myers presided over a dynasty. Paying Jordan Poole $125 million and drafting James Wiseman and Jonathan Kuminga were certainly strikes against him as a talent evaluator, but that has little to do with his legendary ability to manage personalities.
The big question internally is spending. The 76ers have ducked the luxury tax four trade deadlines in a row. Joel Embiid publicly begged them not to last season, and they did so anyway, creating a PR nightmare when Jared McCain blew up in Oklahoma City. The Sixers almost definitely won’t duck the tax this season unless it’s a train wreck, but what you do when you have LeBron making the minimum isn’t really a fair barometer of typical spending habits. It will take sustained spending to disprove the cheapness allegations.
15. Detroit Pistons
February ranking: 15
The Pistons are an appropriate midpoint for these rankings in that Trajan Langdon has done nothing seismic in either direction. He’s hit no home runs nor has he had any overwhelming strikeouts. He’s tinkered on the margins without touching the core that Troy Weaver built. He hasn’t traded a single first-round pick yet. He hasn’t even re-signed Jalen Duren or Ausar Thompson.
Kudos to him for negotiating hard with the pair. If that duo is going to be offensively viable together, it will have to be at a reasonable enough price for the Pistons to also be able to pay a high-end secondary ball-handler and scores of shooters. They are using the leverage that restricted free agency grants them with Duren effectively and seem prepared to do the same with Thompson.
Most of Langdon’s work has boiled down to role player acquisition, and you have to do a pretty good job of that to take a team with no new star power from 14 wins to 60 in two years. The additions of Tobias Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr., Malik Beasley and Dennis Schröder all hit in 2025. They handled Beasley’s off-court problems well with a clean pivot to Duncan Robinson. Daniss Jenkins may have been overburdened as that secondary creator in the playoffs, but getting a high-level backup point guard as an undrafted free agent is still a win.
The amount of consternation Reed Sheppard’s role in Houston’s rotation has generated is funny when you remember that Ron Holland was drafted two picks later and largely wasn’t even in Detroit’s playoff rotation. Either that pick was a miss or Holland simply isn’t viable on a team that already has a total non-shooter in Thompson. Either way, that’s probably the biggest mistake Langdon has made to this point, and Holland has still at least contributed in the regular season. We still don’t quite know what Langdon wants his version of the Pistons to look like. He inherited someone else’s house two years ago and has really only refurnished the den.
