The Yossis: NBA Front Office Awards + An Announcement
I create and give out awards for various aspects of front office work and transactions throughout the 2024-25 season. But first, a quick announcement.
Announcement
I'm excited to announce that I've been given the privilege of instructing at Sports Business Classroom this summer! If you’ve never heard of it, it’s an educational and networking program held annually during NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. It has been going on for a decade and has been one of the best gateways for many of the league’s top young minds entering the industry in recent years.
I highly recommend this program for anyone who wants to take a chance at breaking into the industry. I will be one of the instructors for the salary cap major, which is one of the focuses there.
There are still many spots available. If you sign up with the code “THIRDAPRON” at checkout, you will receive a lifetime free subscription to Third Apron. You can register here with this link: https://www.sportsbusinessclassroom.com/business-of-basketball-registration/#register
I'm looking forward to being a part of this and hope to see many of you in Vegas this summer!
The Executive of the Year award winner was just announced. Last month, I wrote extensively on the award, its history, and what other executives look for in that award.
As I wrote, I started thinking: what if other awards were given to teams to highlight more aspects of front office work? While Executive of the Year honors who other executives consider the top executive, this would be a good way of reflecting on transactions made throughout the year. So I came up with my own awards, explained my criteria, and named winners.
This is the first annual Yossis, honoring transactions made beginning after the end of the 2023-24 regular season and through the end of the 2024-25 regular season.
Best Salary Cap Management: Oklahoma City Thunder
This is for the team that best utilized their available salary cap flexibility to significantly improve the roster now and in the future. This doesn’t take into account the work done to create the conditions needed for these opportunities. That would be best salary cap planning, but that won’t be taken into account because that would encompass work done in previous seasons.
The Thunder did a great job using their $30 million in cap space to sign Isaiah Hartenstein. The annual salary felt a bit of an overpay but he’s met the value and they kept it short. They also gave him a team option for the third year, allowing them to restructure his contract to something more team-friendly as the rest of the roster gets more expensive in a couple of years.
They signed Hartenstein while also preserving enough cap space to keep the minimum cap holds of Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe. Both players had minimum salary team options for 2024-25, but the Thunder didn’t need the flexibility from that. So they declined them and re-signed both players to contracts with significant raises for 2024-25 with team-friendly, decreasing contracts over four seasons. This will help maintain their high level of depth over the next few seasons.
The Thunder also acquired one of the league’s best on-ball defenders in Alex Caruso for a player in Josh Giddey that had little value for them in the long term. Caruso’s salary was only $1.5 million higher than Giddey’s in 2024-25, so it didn’t impact their cap space plans. Most teams would love to have just one All-Defensive level player like Caruso. The Thunder have 7. They also extended him to a contract that will make him one of the biggest luxuries, given his low minute totals.
The Thunder are in a position with their payroll structure to sustain long-term success. They are in a position to avoid the luxury tax in 2025-26 while running back their current roster. They could potentially avoid it in 2026-27, but it’ll likely require them to chip away a bit at their depth. They’ll eventually become taxpayers and perhaps go over the second apron, but ownership has shown a willingness to spend back in 2017-2019.
Most Efficient Payroll: Oklahoma City Thunder
This is for the team that rostered the most players who meet or exceed the value of their respective salaries that season. That’s an important distinction because some might view it as the award for the team with the lowest payroll relative to their win total. In that case, the winner this season would be the Pistons for winning 44 games while having the lowest payroll in the league.
This essentially came down to the Cavaliers and Thunder. The Cavaliers, by my count, have 9 players who met or exceeded the value of their contracts, including two of the best minimum-level-salaried values in the league. However, the Thunder arguably have 11 rotation players all meeting or exceeding the value with their production. Both teams have an embarrassment of riches with their depth, but the Thunder gets the slight edge this year.
Best Scouting: Philadelphia 76ers
This award is for the team that identified and acquired the most value in the draft, free agency, and trade. However, established players aren’t taken into consideration. This mostly focuses on a team’s ability to find younger players who have potential and may be overlooked by the rest of the league. The Sixers came out on top largely with the selection of Jared McCain, who is an early frontrunner for top player in the 2024 draft class, with the 16th overall selection.
The Sixers also acquired Quentin Grimes WITH a second-round pick for Caleb Martin1. Grimes has been criminally underappreciated in each of his stops, and he’s the perfect fourth or fifth option starting guard for a team with so many other high-usage players. Expect the Sixers to re-sign him to a lucrative deal this summer.
They found a ton of value on the margins, too. They had one of the most valuable minimum signings of the season with Guerschon Yabusele, who could be commanding a salary at least in the $5.7 million taxpayer mid-level range this summer. They also drafted Adem Bona in the second round, signed Justin Edwards as an undrafted free agent, and traded for Jared Butler. All these players showed various flashes of promise in their extended minutes in the second half of the season.
The Hawks were a close second, largely with their identification of Dyson Daniels and decision to acquire him. They also drafted Zaccharie Risacher, who so far could still come out as the right selection with the first overall pick, given the early returns of the 2024 draft. But the Sixers had a larger body of work and got more value relative to their position ahead of the transaction.
Most Improved Outlook: Atlanta Hawks
The Hawks were in a difficult position coming out of the 2023-24 season. They were on a downward trend out of the playoffs, had no top prospects to look forward to, and had little to no salary cap flexibility. To make matters worse, they were about to start conveying first-round draft equity to the Spurs for acquiring Dejounte Murray in 2022.
Then they traded Murray for Daniels and two first-round picks. I wrote extensively on the significance of this trade, citing it as an example of one move that could solve multiple problems and shift a team’s outlook. They get a player who is a better fit and likely projects better than Murray. They also buy some time on their draft pick deficit by getting two first-round picks, including the Kings’ 2025 first-round pick. That selection essentially replaces their selection being conveyed to the Spurs this year.
For the first time in a while, it feels like the Hawks are building toward something. The developments of Daniels and Jalen Johnson are promising. And they owe a lot to the luck that allowed them to jump up in the lottery last year to select Risacher. They’re still not completely out of the woods yet. They still owe the Spurs a swap in 2026 and another first-round pick in 2027. But they reversed most of the damage from the first Murray trade.
Best Accumulation of Value: Brooklyn Nets
I named Sean Marks my Executive of the Year for the Bridges trade and the Rockets trade that returned most of their own first-round picks. They also received a net of two second-round picks for Dennis Schroder and three second-round picks for Dorian Finney-Smith2. They now have 16 first and 16 second-round picks over the next seven drafts.
Bridges is a great player. He’s a great third option who could rise to be a great second option at times. Five future unprotected first-round picks, including two extending at least four years out at the time of the trade, is a significant haul for a non-All-Star. It further clarifies their trade of Durant to Phoenix, which has now yielded arguably 11 first-round picks of value3.
Best Value Contract: Jalen Brunson
Jalen Brunson’s current contract with the Knicks is already the best value in the NBA. The extension he signed with the Knicks will keep him as one of the best contracts over the next three years. A consistent second-to-third team All-NBA player earning below the max as the third highest-paid player on his team will do that.
This Knicks core is talented but also flawed. They will need to make some moves to address them. Brunson’s contract will help give them the flexibility to make those moves. Bridges is also eligible to extend for the same contract that Brunson signed. Both earning below-market salaries should help the Knicks extend their window at least for the next three seasons.
Most Creative Cap Mechanics in a Transaction: Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks
The Knicks’ acquisition of Karl-Anthony Towns was a saga. The original reporting of the deal only had the Knicks sending out Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, leaving them $8 million short of matching Towns’ contract. They needed to send out equal to or more than Towns’ salary since they were above the first apron.
That led to a quest for fans around the league to decipher what else the Knicks would send out. The most logical candidate was Mitchell Robinson, whose $14.3 million salary was more than enough. But the longer his name went unmentioned in follow-up reports, the more it looked like the Knicks would do something else that would test the boundaries of the new trade rules.
I figured out quickly that the Knicks would make up the remaining $8 million by including the minimum salary of Keita Bates-Diop, and sign and trading three players they had various forms of Bird rights to: Duane Washington Jr., Charlie Brown Jr., and Daquan Jeffries. Since the new CBA prevents teams from aggregating multiple minimum-salaried players outside of December 16 through the trade deadline, all players received a $1 raise above their respective minimum salaries to get around this rule.
There’s more to this trade. The Knicks had to give these players at least three years so they could be signed and traded, but made only the first year guaranteed. The Hornets acquired these players with their room mid-level exception, which became the first case of a team using their mid-level exception as a trade exception.
Most notably, the Knicks were actually able to increase their payroll despite teams above the first apron not being allowed to in trades. That’s because they inflated their outgoing salary requirements by signing and trading multiple players. This, along with getting around the one minimum-salaried player aggregation rule by giving those players just a $1 above the minimum, drew the ire of the league office.
And they were able to do all this while staying below their second apron hard cap. This wouldn’t be possible without meticulous cap strategy along the way. Decisions like not giving Precious Achiuwa more than a $6 million salary and giving Pacome Dadiet 80 percent of his rookie scale salary all made a difference. This is probably my favorite transaction from a salary cap strategy perspective since the Kevin Durant for D’Angelo Russell double sign-and-trade of 2019.
Most Fun Transaction: Mikal Bridges to the Knicks
Most probably feel the Luka Doncic trade was the most fun. It came on a random Saturday night and sparked discourse outside the NBA realm. For that, it’s the most impactful transaction. On a personal level, I wouldn’t call it the most fun. The initial Shams tweet broke my brain, and the process of analyzing and covering it gave me various degrees of anxiety that ruined my sleep for the week.
I had a blast covering the Bridges trade, though. It’s easy to overlook that one when the Doncic and Towns trade happened after. If you told me Bridges got traded and asked me to guess to which team, the Knicks would’ve been my 29th guess. I did not see the Knicks and Nets ending their 41-year-old cold war anytime soon.
This trade was one of the first examples of the new apron rules coming into effect. The original reporting had the Knicks acquiring more salaries than they were sending out. This would’ve hard-capped them below the first apron, limiting how much more the Knicks could’ve built onto this roster.
It wasn’t until after the moratorium that it was reported that the trade was being expanded to include more pieces from the Knicks. It was modified to include more outgoing salaries than incoming, allowing them to exceed the first apron but stay below the second apron. That $11 million difference in spending would come into play later in their acquisition of Towns.
There are so many other enjoyable elements of this trade. The Villanova Knicks being complete (even if only for three months), the sheer amount of draft picks the Knicks sent out, and jokes about Tom Thibodeau going up against Bridges’ perfect attendance. History might sweep this one under the rug, but I’ll never the night this trade went down.
Most Fun Team: New York Knicks
The Knicks have been featured too many times for this not to be the outcome. I’ve gone into great detail about the Brunson extension, Towns trade, and Bridges trade. Just about everything they did this offseason touched on so many facets of the salary cap and the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The OG Anunoby contract will be a fascinating case study of how much a high-end starting sub-All-Star level wing is worth. This contract was a market setter for players like him who earned well below their worth. Many feel his $42 million annual salary is too high and could become a negative value. If he declines, then sure. But he’s meeting that value if he continues playing at his current level.
The final aspect of the Knicks’ year was navigating the second apron hard cap. They completed the Towns trade with the ability to stay below the second apron while signing one veteran minimum-salaried player, and one of their second-round picks to a rookie minimum salary4. They surprised us again and went into the first two weeks of the season with 12 players to give them more apron space into the season. It didn’t end up mattering, but it was a reasonable decision that gave them more flexibility to make additional signings earlier in case of an emergency.
The Sixers had to send out a second-round pick after the trade got amended, but they originally got extra value attached to the better player in the deal.
Maybe more like four second-round picks of value with Maxwell Lewis taken into consideration.
Four for Durant, five for Bridges, and possibly at least two for Cameron Johnson in the future.
The Knicks gave one of their final roster spots to Ariel Hukporti, who was already signed to a two-way contract. His actual salary counted against the apron instead of the two-year veteran minimum since he was drafted. Players with 0 or 1 year of service who sign with teams that didn’t draft them have their minimum salaries count as if they had two years of service. This is known as tax variance.