NBA Awards, Part II: 2023-24 Executive of the Year!

And Most Valuable Player, Sixth Man, and Clutch Player, I suppose

There are just a handful of games left in the regular season! Today, we finish off awards with the 2023-24 NBA season’s Executive of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Clutch Player of the Year, and Most Valuable Player. Later this week, we’ll have All-NBA teams, and then it’ll be time to shift our focus to the playoffs. This season has gone by so fast, but there’s a lot to celebrate!

Click here to see Part I: DPOY, MIP, ROY, and COY (all free!).

Executive of the Year

1. Brad Stevens, Boston Celtics

2. Leon Rose, New York Knicks

3. Nico Harrison, Dallas Mavericks

Stevens has put together one of the greatest executive performances in recent league history. He assembled an outrageous roster full of two-way talent and shooting that far outclasses anyone else in the league, on paper — and he didn’t have to raid the team’s draft picks to do it.

Trading Marcus Smart for two first-round picks was a masterstroke of selling high. Although many criticized Stevens for banishing the team’s supposed heart and soul, I believe that Smart’s, uh, vocal leadership may have rankled some of the Celtics’ stars, even if they wouldn’t admit it. He’s also been hurt nearly the entire season for Memphis.

Watching the Bucks trade for Damian Lillard would’ve made lesser teams quake. Instead, Stevens went and got the man Lillard replaced, Jrue Holiday. Holiday, a better version of Marcus Smart, is tailor-made to put guards like Lillard into a living hell. It’s unclear if the Bucks trading for Lillard made the Bucks better, but it definitely made the Celtics better. Think about that!

The Smart deal also brought back Kristaps Porzingis, the sharpshooting big man who allows the Celtics to play five-out without sacrificing defensively. I still don’t fully understand the alchemy that turned Marcus Smart and a second-round pick into Porzingis and two first-round picks (one of which was used to nab Holiday). That’s an upgrade in talent and draft capital. The Celtics also signed Porzingis to a reasonable extension.

Even Stevens’ smaller moves, like extending backup guard Payton Pritchard on a cheap deal, have worked out wonderfully.

Stevens’ win here is much like the Celtics in real life — he’s so far ahead that the competition has lost sight of him.

But I have to fill out the rest of the ballot, so Leon Rose gets second. The Donte DiVincenzo signing looks like a stroke of genius as the Big Ragu continues his prime Klay Thompson impression. Getting Precious Achiuwa and OG Anunoby without surrendering first-round picks was an immense win (although if Anunoby can’t stay healthy, we may end up feeling differently about this in the long run). I loved the trade for Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks, although neither has played particularly well for New York yet. We only saw this team fully healthy briefly, but they looked like legitimate threats in the East.

I didn’t like one Rose move that turned out to be prescient: extending backup guard Miles McBride for barely more than the league minimum. At the time of the extension, McBride had barely played at all and had never played well. But given significant minutes for the first time in his career, the defensive-minded McBride has found his three-point stroke and become a legitimately helpful rotation player. He’s playing 40+ minutes some nights!

After Rose is another massive gap. I eventually went with Nico Harrison of the Mavericks. I liked the Grant Williams signing at the time (whoops), and I loved the Derrick Jones Jr. and Dante Exum fits from Day 1. DJJ and Exum have become critical pieces for the Mavericks, while Williams was used in a later trade.

In the draft, Harrison successfully traded down (getting off Davis Bertans’ massive contract) and still got his man in rookie center Dereck Lively, who looks like a perfect rim-running big for Luka Doncic. Then, with the team’s defense scuffling during the season, he traded for PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford.

Those were high-risk, high-reward trades; Harrison sent out pretty pennies for those players. The Mavericks are operating as if Luka Doncic is a flight risk, so I have to believe he is a flight risk. Maybe these moves were necessary to mollify Doncic.

Regardless of the motivation, the new acquisitions have gone to work, toughening up the team’s defense without sacrificing any scoring punch. Since Feb 10th, the Mavericks have the second-best record in the league behind Boston. They’ve ranked fourth on offense and an astonishing sixth on defense. If the Mavs flame out in the first round, we’ll look back on these trades differently. But if Dallas makes an extended postseason run, Harrison’s moves will deserve much of the credit.

Sixth Man of the Year

1. Jonathan Isaac, Orlando Magic

2. Naz Reid, Minnesota Timberwolves

3. Bogdan Bogdanovic, Sacramento Kings

This isn’t the worst crop of Sixth men ever, but it’s far from the best, which opens up the door for a surprise pick.

The 65-game rule is not a requirement for 6MOY. Unlike some people, I don’t put much stock in minutes or games played for this award. Playing time as a Sixth Man has as much to do with who is ahead of you on the depth chart (and who gets injured) as it does with your overall impact level. So if I have to choose between a bunch of solid bench scorers playing more minutes and Isaac, I’m picking Isaac every time.

Isaac is one of the most destructive defenders in basketball and would have been on my Defensive Player of the Year ballot in some form or another if he’d qualified. He’s first in D-EPM, possesses ludicrous block and steal percentages, and is in the top decile for offensive and defensive rebounding. Lineups with Isaac allow 1990’s-era points per 100 possessions.

He’s never, ever out of a play. Isaac can gamble for steals because he knows that even if he misses, he can rise up like the Undertaker to murder a shot from behind:

Oops, sorry. Meant to post this:

Isaac is now canning 39% of his triples and launching at a respectable rate. He’ll never win a game of pure counting numbers, but I truly think he’s been more impactful in his scant minutes than everyone else in their far larger sample. It’s unclear if his fragile body could withstand a bigger workload, but we might see him ramp up in the playoffs. I can’t wait to have more Isaac on my TV.

Statistically, it’s tough to put Reid ahead of Bogdanovic, but I think he’s been better in ways that are hard to encapsulate. Reid is one of the best-shooting big men in the entire NBA, canning 42% of his triples on very high volume, and he’s vastly improved his defense while reducing his foul rate.

Notably, the Wolves haven’t missed a single beat since Karl-Anthony Towns went down. Reid has plugged in and started scoring like gangbusters, averaging nearly 19 points and seven rebounds per game while shooting 44% from deep. He’s ramped up his volume and his efficiency, and it has impacted winning.

It’s hard to find big men who are respectable shooters; Reid is one of the best. Elite shooting from a big is more impactful than a wing because it’s so much harder to find and allows for more flexible roster constructions. It’s even more important for Minnesota since it enables Reid to do a credible Karl-Anthony Towns impersonation. Relatedly, the Wolves have gone 11-5 since Towns’ injury and are tied for first in the West. This is meaningful production.

Reid can shoot from anywhere, too. He’s over 40% from both corners, the left shoulder, and at the top of the arc. That flexibility allows the Wolves to use him in pick-and-pops (often aided by a Gobert screen) anywhere on the court:

Bogdanovic narrowly gets third over Malik Monk, who might’ve been the frontrunner for this award in January. But Monk has tailed off in 2024, and the Kings lost his minutes even when he was out there with Sabonis or Fox.

Bogdanovic, on the other hand, jumpstarts Atlanta’s offense whenever he touches the floor. (Their defense vastly improves, too, although I can’t attribute much of that to Bogdanovic.) His 38% accuracy from deep on enormous (and difficult!) volume is essential to everything Atlanta does — it’s too bad it took Trae Young’s injury for coach Quinn Snyder to permanently put Bogdanovic in the starting lineup.

Bogdanovic is an underrated passer (3.1 assists per game) and tries hard on defense. He may very well win this award in real life, as he’s played way more minutes than Reid and more than twice as many as Isaac, and many voters value that more than I do.

Clutch Player of the Year