Brad Stevens built a Boston roster that earned the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference last season, then had to part ways with four members of that roster to escape what could have been a massive luxury tax bill.<\/p>\n
The result? Boston was No. 2 in the East again \u2014 and remains a legitimate championship hopeful in a season where many likely expected otherwise.<\/p>\n
It all earned Stevens the NBA\u2019s Executive of the Year award on Monday, his second time winning that trophy in the past three seasons. He\u2019s the 12th two-time winner and the sixth person to win twice within a three-year span.<\/p>\n
Stevens got 11 first-place votes from a panel of 30 basketball executives \u2014 one from each of the NBA\u2019s teams \u2014 who ranked their top three choices in order. Stevens appeared on 17 of those 30 ballots, as did Atlanta\u2019s Onsi Saleh, who finished second. Detroit\u2019s Trajan Langdon, who has overseen a massive turnaround with the Pistons, was third for the second consecutive season.<\/p>\n
Sam Presti of Oklahoma City, last year\u2019s winner, was fifth. San Antonio\u2019s Brian Wright was sixth, Houston\u2019s Rafael Stone seventh, Phoenix\u2019s Brian Gregory eighth, while Cleveland\u2019s Koby Altman and Denver\u2019s Josh Kroenke tied for ninth. Memphis\u2019 Zach Kleiman and the Los Angeles Lakers\u2019 Rob Pelinka tied for 11th.<\/p>\n
The executive of the year award is not like most NBA season honors that are voted on by a global panel of 100 writers and broadcasters who cover the league and cast ballots shortly after the end of the regular season.<\/p>\n
This was the seventh award to be announced by the NBA since the end of the regular season. The others:<\/p>\n
\u2014 San Antonio\u2019s Victor Wembanyama was the unanimous Defensive Player of the Year.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Oklahoma City\u2019s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander got 96 of a possible 100 first-place votes to win the Clutch Player of the Year award.<\/p>\n
\u2014 San Antonio\u2019s Keldon Johnson won Sixth Man of the Year.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Boston\u2019s Derrick White won the Sportsmanship Award. That award, unlike most others, is selected solely by active NBA players.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Atlanta\u2019s Nickeil Alexander-Walker won Most Improved Player.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Dallas\u2019 Cooper Flagg is the Rookie of the Year.<\/p>\n
Other award announcements yet to be scheduled include Most Valuable Player (either Gilgeous-Alexander, Wembanyama or Denver\u2019s Nikola Jokic) and Coach of the Year (either Detroit\u2019s J.B. Bickerstaff, San Antonio\u2019s Mitch Johnson or Boston\u2019s Joe Mazzulla).<\/p>\n
The NBA will announce the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year and the Hustle Award winner later this week.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/nba<\/p>\n
Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brad Stevens built a Boston roster that earned the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference last season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-634772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}