Lakers News: Where Rob Pelinka Finished In NBA's Executive Of The Year Voting
Today, the NBA has announced that Sacramento Kings general manager and president of basketball operations Monte McNair has been named the league's Executive of the Year, via a press release. Kings head coach Mike Brown was named the league's Coach of the Year last week. It is the second such award for Brown, who also won while coaching current Los Angeles Lakers All-Star small forward LeBron James on the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The NBA's press release regarding McNair's award is fascinating, because it also reveals where LA team vice president of basketball operations and GM Rob Pelinka finished in voting. Pelinka totally reshaped the role players around stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis with a flurry of savvy midseason moves, and LA has now gotten further in the playoffs than the teams of any of the league's top three Executive of the Year finishers (McNair, Cavaliers team president Koby Altman, and Utah Jazz lead executive Justin Zanik). Pelinka offloaded the egregious contracts of ex-Lakers point guards Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley and Kendrick Nunn, plus a top-four protected first round draft pick, some second round picks (many of which he replaced in trades), and Thomas Bryant's veteran's minimum deal in return for point guard D'Angelo Russell, power forward Jarred Vanderbilt, combo forward Rui Hachimura, swingman Malik Beasley, and center Mo Bamba. Russell, Vanderbilt and Hachimura have emerged as key pieces in the team's playoff rotation.
Pelinka also traded for shooting guard Davon Reed, whom he waived during the final weekend of the regular season to carve out roster room for defensively-inclined off-guard Shaquille Harrison and bench warmer Tristan Thompson ahead of the playoffs.
Despite all this, Pelinka only finished in 11th place in voting. A panel of other league executives votes on the award. This is a disappointment, as Pelinka essentially salvaged the season of what had looked like a play-in team (or worse) into a frisky fringe title contender, which is now just three games away from a return to the Western Conference after missing the postseason entirely last year with an almost totally different roster outside of James, Davis, Austin Reaves and Wenyen Gabriel.
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