My NBA Awards ballot: picking every NBA award for the 2023-24 season
By Ben Handler
Executive of the Year
This may be the easiest award on the ballot for me. Since transitioning from head coach to president of basketball operations, Brad Stevens has put on an absolute master class in team building and roster construction. You can point to any number of reasons why the Celtics have been lapping the field this season, but they all come back to Stevens (or Danny Ainge before him).
This award usually rewards an executive's recent body of work and how it has culminated this season versus just focusing on the moves made in this single season. But the Celtics have recently acquired Al Horford, Derrick White, Kristaps Porzingis, and Jrue Holiday without sacrificing star players or major draft equity.
Stevens has already managed to extend Porzingis and Holiday for less money than their pending options, he’s also orchestrated great long-term deals for key bench pieces like Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser and added a couple of solid young flyers for cheap at the deadline in Xavier Tillman and Jaden Springer.
On top of that, Stevens dealt masterfully with the Ime Udoka situation, hiring Coach of the Year candidate Joe Mazzulla and fortifying his staff with solid veteran assistants Sam Cassell and Charles Lee. The Celtics won 64 games this season and won the Eastern Conference by 14 games. There were plenty of great executives across the league this year but right now Stevens stands alone.