Someone Actually Voted for Neil Olshey as Executive of the Year

James Jones is an extremely deserving winner of Executive of the Year.

Buoyed by the offseason acquisitions of Second Team All-NBA point guard Chris Paul and stalwart veteran forward Jae Crowder, the Phoenix Suns tipped off the Western Conference Finals on Sunday after finishing with the league's second-best record during the regular season—a direct result of Jones pushing his team's chips in at exactly the right time.

Needless to say, Neil Olshey didn't do nearly enough over the past league year for the Trail Blazers to join the Suns as surprise championship contenders in 2020-21. Don't tell that to one anonymous front office member scattered somewhere across the league landscape, though.

Olshey, Portland's embattled general manager, inexplicably received a single first-place vote for 2020-21 Executive of the Year, it was revealed on Sunday. The Blazers' historically porous defense, lack of quality two-way depth and fraught locker-room dynamics alone should have been enough for Olshey to garner zero consideration whatsoever from his fellow peers for the league's top front-office honor.

Instead, despite a tumultuous regular season ending with another disappointing first-round playoff exit, Olshey earned as many first-place votes as the New York Knicks' Leon Rose, Atlanta Hawks' Travis Schlenk and Oklahoma City Thunder's Sam Presti–all of whom spearheaded franchise-altering offseasons to help guide their teams to unforeseen heights. Olshey even had more total voting points than the Philadelphia 76ers' Daryl Morey and Milwaukee Bucks' Jon Horst.

What individual move coming into this season could possibly account for one of his peers lavishing such praise on Olshey? Perhaps trading Trevor Ariza and a pair of first-round picks for Robert Covington, whose ultra-disruptive off-ball defense and timely three-point shooting helped Portland fortify its longstanding weakness on the wing.

Maybe swapping Gary Trent Jr. for Norman Powell got Olshey that confounding first-place vote, too. The Blazers, after all, owned the league's best offense and third-best net rating after the trade deadline, per NBA.com/stats, and their new three-guard starting lineup was quietly dominant. But it's not like Powell made much of an impact in the playoffs – even against a Denver squad playing without Jamal Murray, Will Barton and P.J. Dozier – and there's still a chance he walks away from Portland come free agency, an especially damaging risk because the Blazers would've had matching rights on Trent.

Olshey's decision to re-acquire Enes Kanter, admirable as his effort was during the regular season, proved disastrous in the playoffs, when to no one's surprise he was played off the floor by Nikola Jokic. Running it back with Anthony certainly contributed to Portland's embarrassing team-wide defense, not to mention the Blazers' penchant for ball-hogging.

Olshey's biggest and boldest free agency move, signing Derrick Jones Jr. to the mid-level exception, seems like a wild overpay. Just like in his final season with the Miami Heat, Jones was out of Portland's rotation when the games really started to matter. Unless the Blazers' next coach can find the permanent role for Jones that Erik Spoelstra and Terry Stotts couldn't, he'll likely sit on Portland's bench next season after picking up the $9.5 million player option on the second and final year of his contract.

There's just no honest defense of a first-place vote for Olshey. By any objective measure, his mediocre at best offseason decision-making is partially responsible for the crossroads at which the Blazers currently find themselves.

Here's hoping the most important summer of Olshey's decade-long tenure in Rip City gets him some actually deserved votes for Executive of the Year come 2022.

READ MORE: A Coaching Change Isn't Nearly Enough for Trail Blazers