2022 Executive of the Year
Sept 7, 2022 22:05:20 GMT
Walt Frazier, Danny Longley, and 8 more like this
Post by Ian Noble on Sept 7, 2022 22:05:20 GMT
2022 Executive of the Year
Introduction: Commissioner's 2022 Address to the League
2022 Executive of the Year
CHAUNCEY BILLUPS
Detroit Pistons
Second Place
Jared Montini
Third Place
Tom Izzo
Other Contenders
Just missing the cut for a Top 3 placement but also considered for the award this year:
LA Clippers - Mike Krzyzewski
New York Knicks - Arvydas Sabonis
Introduction: Commissioner's 2022 Address to the League
Season 11 has been filed away in the archives and it's time to look back to the year that was, ahead to the changes we can see coming, and prepare for what is clearly regarded as the most prestigious award for any General Manager to receive: the Executive of the Year! This year we reached a quite sobering milestone: we hired a manager, Chris Webber to be exact, born on the same day the league began over 15 years ago! Welcome to the league, young whippersnapper! Maybe he's the chosen one and not Lebron?! We had a draft lottery evening with results so absurd I wasn't even impressed, the emergence of a brand new injury system which is still in the works, and an almost biblically inevitable Finals matchup between Golden State and Boston that finally won yours truly the first ring with a team I've built from scratch, although not without Hanamichi Sakuragi 's Cavs stealing the show (if you go by the number of views on the thread) and nearly bringing the biggest upset... perhaps ever?
21/22 felt like a year characterized by the hilarious continual re-emergence of Theo Maledon references after this mid-season trade between Houston and Miami. I suppose it was inevitable after our dear Mr Shaquille O'Neal described Maledon as a potential star then traded him for literally nothing four months later, after an entire page of the D5 memes thread had been devoted to Maledon and Jerry West had exposed Tom Izzo 's "DENNIS" System in response! It's a series of managerial moves that takes courage if nothing else, but nowhere near the courage of Gary Payton to be picking #5 and dig deeper down the real-life draft order (11 spots) than I can ever remember to take AJ Griffin! Absolute unit!
This year we had multiple examples of GMs quitting and rejoining the often polarizing and emotionally unsafe Discord server, we had civil war in the Stock Watch Discussion, I managed to chronicle the absolutely absurd lengths Andrei Kirilenko would go to block James Kay from making minimum signings, Joel Embiid became the greatest outside shooter in NBA and D5 history, we got a peek into Jeremiah Hill 's private life before he sadly hung up his virtual boots and resigned, and I think I've got one more shoutout to Andrei Kirilenko 's masterplan in which he outlined a series of back-alley deals with the verbal commitment of Kawhi Leonard that would result in a payload like never before for the Nets.
Overall I want to give a big thanks to everyone involved for yet another year of D5, not least Danny Longley and Alex English who might not be returning as player agents next year and who have given a decade of service to the league which is a value that's impossible to quantify. There's some serious competition for this year's EOTY award and I find it's getting harder to and harder to choose between such quality competition each year, but stay tuned for each announcement as it arrives!
2022 Executive of the Year
CHAUNCEY BILLUPS
Detroit Pistons
Welcome to the podium your 2022 Executive of the Year, Mr Chauncey Billups!
From what I have seen across Mr Billups's five year reign this might be the best available example to show that no matter how bad a team can get a good GM can always work wonders. Until Chauncey arrived in July 2017 the Pistons had been through six GMs in the league's first five years, an era which was headlined by the disastrous three year reign of Ghazny Dimalen and followed by an albeit forgivably hopeless six-month stint by Vlade Divac, not even the Pistons first round pick belonged to the team which was led by end-of-career Joakim Noah and Alec Burks when Chauncey Billups arrived in town. Fast forward five years and you have a team which Dynasty Five GMs voted top and joint-top to the questions; Who will have the best team in 5 years time? and If you could switch roster with any other team in the league, which team would it be?! An absolutely phenomenal achievement.
Perhaps the best way to demonstrate how this 2021/22 season was really the culmination of Chauncey Billups's career it's best to look at this year's Rejected Trades pile; of the five rejected trades two were from Chauncey's Pistons and one was eventually accepted after initially being rejected for being judged too one-sided. Outright rejected was a pre-season deal which would've sent Chauncey's only disappointing draft pick I've seen so far, 2019's Coby White*, in a deal which netted the Pistons both the best young player in the swap, Anfernee Simons, and two first round draft picks that are far more valuable the one pick the Pistons would've lost. The second trade however really does a great job of showcasing just how good Chauncey Billups has been the last five years: the Donovan Mitchell trade* showed off Chauncey's drafting skills by combining his 2019 Pistons draft-steal, Keldon Johnson*, his 2020 draft-steal Saddiq Bey*, as well as two future first-rounders he wouldn't be needing any more, one of which he picked up in exchange for the largely disappointing James Bouknight* just to further showcase his trading skill, for the young IRL-Cavs All Star who will clearly spearhead the D5 Detroit Pistons offense for the better part of the next decade!
Chauncey Billups's drafting record has also exceeded expectations and, when there has been a blemish on the record, there's been a trade to tidy up afterwards. As mentioned earlier, before James Bouknight* could play a game he'd been traded for four future picks and this year's late-season departure of Coby White for a playoff-rental of the legendary Chris Paul and his teammate Dillon Brooks* was an admirable decision in the lead up to a Playoffs where the Pistons were disappointed not to be vying for their first Finals berth. The 2020 acquisitions of the Jordanesqe Anthony Edwards* and impressive Saddiq Bey were excellent decisions, Jalen Brunson at #27* was a steal, Keldon Johnson* at #25 was a steal, the only asterisk that will give many GMs reason to smirk was trading up for Ayton to avoid Luka Doncic*, but it's not like Ayton hasn't become one of the league's best big men anyway.
If the trading doesn't convince you and you feel that drafting the core of a contender isn't enough then there's also the 2021 Off Season's only high-profile player poaching to also lure you in, last year Milwaukee tore down their team and jeopardized their re-signing chances and it was Chauncey Billups as always ready to pounce, picking up Dejounte Murray with the greatest of ease* (credit to Glenn for not quitting!) to put the exclamation point on one of the greatest rebuilds the D5 Universe has ever seen!
The D5 Pistons have ascended under the reign of Chauncey Billups into one of the most stacked teams in the league, a team so good they had to bench young phenom Anthony Edwards for the Playoffs and play him as a Sixth Man. Their biggest worry from now onwards will be how and who to retain on max contracts as DeAndre Ayton expires next summer whilst Anthony Edwards mercifully still has three more seasons on his rookie contract, it's a good problem to have and I've no doubt, given what we've seen so far, that Chauncey Billups will manage the transition as masterfully as he has done the past five years. Congratulations to Chauncey and the Pistons, your Dynasty Five 2022 Executive of the Year!
Trading:
Signing:
Drafting:
Planning:
Signing:
Drafting:
Planning:
2021 Team
DeAndre Ayton
Domantas Sabonis
Nicolas Batum
Anthony Edwards
Coby White
2022 Team
DeAndre Ayton
Domantas Sabonis
Anthony Edwards
Donovan Mitchell
Dejounte Murray
DeAndre Ayton
Domantas Sabonis
Nicolas Batum
Anthony Edwards
Coby White
2022 Team
DeAndre Ayton
Domantas Sabonis
Anthony Edwards
Donovan Mitchell
Dejounte Murray
Second Place
Jared Montini
It's not often you get a GM anywhere near the Executive of the Year list after just one year's service (albeit not including his previous tenure with the Phoenix Suns) but Jared Montini flew out the gates with the Jazz this season and has built the newest Western Conference contender out of a team that has a turbulent recent history of GM turnover with four managers in the last four years, all of them trying to fit a team around the emerging Jayson Tatum.
After doing my usual Gandalf style investigation, pouring through all this year's and previous years trades and transactions, it feels like there was a giant Hoover Dam holding back a torrent of trades and that Hoover Dam's name was Bradley Beal. On February 7th the Jazz and Pacers pulled the trigger on a deal to bring Bradley Beal to Utah, which Jared Montini said himself "took months to negotiate", and from then onwards a tsunami of deals were to follow and eventuate in the latest Western contender! The deal itself for Beal was costly, gone was 85 rated Clint Capela, highly rated prospect Collin Sexton, the enigma that is Marvin Bagley and we'll see what becomes of the two Utah first rounders in 2023 and '25, but the payoff by the end of the season I'm sure couldn't have made Jared any happier.
After the injured Beal arrived Montini set to work tearing down the house so he could rebuild it all the easier. Jayson Tatum, long time friend of Bradley Beal, remained of course, was a focal point to the Jazz offense like no other player in Dynasty Five history and ended up averaging a Dynasty Five record 31.4 points per game, 2576 total points! JaeSean Tate arrived three days after the Beal trade in exchange for Cameron Payne, the next day Derrick Rose was gone for two players who then immediately departed in exchange for Derrick Schroder who hadn't even packed his bags by the time his salary was jettisoned to OKC in a cap space move signaling the key important pivot by Jared toward Off Season Free Agency that we all know would pay off immensely. As an afterthought tank commander Aaron Gordon's late season departure was a further strip-down move. Pre-February the Jazz sat on 19W / 17L, by the end of the season they won another 17 games and lost a further 29, but when their pick dropped two spots in the lottery it took another six days before it left town in exchange for promising youngster Anfernee Simons. A fair trade in retrospect perhaps for what became the exciting prospect of Keegan Murray.
With the final deal of the season, still with a view to Off Season Free Agency, Al Horford was brought in to Utah in a trade which was processed on July 1st. The "die was cast", the stage was set, and nine days later all of Jared Montini's plans paid off when James Harden announced his signing with the Jazz, such a great example of a well executed plan, always a gamble in free agency, but with a team sculpted for months with a singular focus of free agency in mind it all came together on the 10th July (as always I feel I should also give a shout out to James Kay, the brutality of OSFA is the biggest pain for any D5 GM). The Jazz got their third superstar and, health permitting, will be banging with the big boys in the West next year, ready to face whatever monster comes out of the East no doubt.
He's been a GM since he joined the D5 Suns in January 2017 but it wasn't until he took some time out and rejoined this season that we really got to see the master planner in action. Amazingly the acquisition of Bradley Beal and James Harden wasn't quite enough to win the prize for Jared Montini this year, and it remains to be seen how long they'll continue to keep performing with Harden himself already showing slight decline last season, but it's nevertheless a close race to the EOTY finish line this year and I'm sure this wont be the last time I'm singing Jared Montini's praises! Excellent work Jared Montini! Great to have you back in the league!
Trading:
Signing:
Drafting:
Planning:
Signing:
Drafting:
Planning:
2021 Team
Clint Capela
Marvin Bagley
Jayson Tatum
Derrick Rose
Collin Sexton
2022 Team
Al Horford
Jayson Tatum
Bradley Beal
Anfernee Simons
James Harden
Clint Capela
Marvin Bagley
Jayson Tatum
Derrick Rose
Collin Sexton
2022 Team
Al Horford
Jayson Tatum
Bradley Beal
Anfernee Simons
James Harden
Third Place
Tom Izzo
He was the GMs choice as EOTY in this year's Survey but he's rolling in at number three this season after some impressive trading, welcome to the stage Mr Tom Izzo!
The Executive of the Year is biased towards trading and this year was not short on Houston Rockets trades, there were eight of them to be precise, but they ducked and weaved and intermingled with one another, Julius Randle came and went twice, Marvin Bagley also, but the sum total of all these deals amounted to some impressive progress for the Rockets this season thanks to Tom Izzo's trading skill. It was back in February when Mr Izzo sent CJ McCollum for a broad package of assets, removed the only player of real value from that package, Jalen Brunson, and pulled the trigger on the aforementioned Theo Maledon trade to welcome Jrue Holiday back to the D5 Rockets. Jalen Brunson has gone on to be heralded as the highly valued and highly paid future face of the real-life Knicks and Jrue Holiday continued his life as one of the premier point guards of the league for the real-life Bucks and the two of them now hold down the D5 Houston Rockets backcourt!
The biggest coup however was a series of trades that eventuated in effectively trading Julius Randle for 90-rated DeMar DeRozan and the cap space to re-sign Houston's entire supporting cast this Off Season! On 9th March DeRozan arrived from Indiana to give the Rockets their superstar pairing, two 90+ players, as DeRozan laced up alongside Giannis. Also arriving in the trade was Marvin Bagley, who promptly left within the month and Houston got their 2022 1st Rounder back from Denver, the first rounder then got flipped back for Julius Randle less than a month later, and then a few days after that Randle was effectively jettisoned for the cap space required for Houston to sign their entire supporting cast during Off Season Free Agency! It was a bit of a clusterbomb of trades but it provided the Rockets with one of the highest rated teams in the league, who disappointed in the playoffs after sweeping Memphis but then coming up against the freight-train that is the Golden State Warriors.
Barely mentioned so far is the Greek elephant in the room, Giannis Antetokounmpo, who continues to be the rock around which the entire Houston Rockets gameplan revolves around and is debatably the greatest player on Earth at this present time of writing! You get the feeling that Houston's roster would be paying dividends in rings if it weren't for the fact that Golden State still soldiers on as a colossus in the West, you have to imagine it is surely only a matter of time? Tom Izzo, as famous in the community as much as he can be embroiled in a stock watch or Discord drama, has established himself as one of the premier GMs in the league during his two year tenure in Houston and it's been yet another solid season for Tom Izzo and the Rockets! Congrats to Tom Izzo who finishes third in the running for this year's award!
(Fun fact I discovered in the process of write up: did you know Tom Izzo and the Houston Rockets haven't made a single draft pick since 2018? Not even a second rounder? That might be a record!)
Trading:
Signing:
Drafting:
Planning:
Signing:
Drafting:
Planning:
2021 Team
Draymond Green
Julius Randle
Giannis Antetokounmpo
CJ McCollum
Kemba Walker
2022 Team
Giannis Antetokounmpo
DeMar DeRozan
Nicolas Batum
Jrue Holiday
Jalen Brunson
Draymond Green
Julius Randle
Giannis Antetokounmpo
CJ McCollum
Kemba Walker
2022 Team
Giannis Antetokounmpo
DeMar DeRozan
Nicolas Batum
Jrue Holiday
Jalen Brunson
Other Contenders
Just missing the cut for a Top 3 placement but also considered for the award this year:
LA Clippers - Mike Krzyzewski
New York Knicks - Arvydas Sabonis