Spurs’ R.C. Buford wins his second NBA Executive of the Year award
For the second time in three seasons, San Antonio Spurs general manager R.C. Buford has been named the NBA’s Executive of the Year. He won the award — which is voted on by fellow league executives rather than media members — after pulling off the single biggest move of the 2015 offseason: signing All-Star power forward LaMarcus Aldridge to team with Defensive Player of the Year Kawhi Leonard, extending the Spurs’ current championship-contending window while also setting San Antonio up to remain in the title chase for years to come.
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Despite more than a decade of exemplary work alongside Gregg Popovich in building the Spurs into the league’s most consistently competitive and excellent franchise, Buford had never received year-end award recognition until the 2013-14 season, which saw the Spurs win 62 games and, eventually, their fourth NBA title in 16 years. This year’s model won a franchise-record 67 games, producing the NBA’s stingiest defense, its third most-efficient offense and the seventh-highest margin of victory in league history … just a tick behind that of the only team to outstrip San Antonio’s 67-15 campaign, the historically excellent 73-9 Golden State Warriors, whose general manager, Bob Myers, won the award last year.
Myers placed third this year, behind Buford and Portland Trail Blazers general manager Neil Olshey. The full voting results:
2015-16 NBA Executive of the Year voting results. pic.twitter.com/IJoYIT5kb0
— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpearsESPN) May 9, 2016
As you can see, while Buford topped the ballot with 73 total award “points” — five points for a first-place vote, three for second-place, one for third — Olshey received more first-place nods than anybody on the list … including, evidently, Buford’s:
Incredibly deserving honor for R.C. Buford, but his own vote was cast for runner-up Neil Olshey, sources say. Great mutual respect.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) May 9, 2016
Beyond that, though, the nature of the “jury of your peers” voting process — unlike awards voted on by media members, no balloting breakdown is released for Executive of the Year — means we’re left in the dark on which execs voted for which other execs. May the speculation on which three decision-makers picked the ousted Sam Hinkie run rampant for all eternity!
You can understand why Buford tabbed Olshey. After seeing a hoped-for dark-horse title run scuttled by Wesley Matthews’ Achilles tendon tear last spring, Olshey anticipated Aldridge’s exit and set about rebuilding Portland’s roster on the fly. He made a draft-night deal to import athletic playmaking center Mason Plumlee. He shipped out longtime starter Nicolas Batum, just one year away from free agency, to the Charlotte Hornets in exchange for steady veteran Gerald Henderson and forward Noah Vonleh, a 2014 lottery pick under contract through 2018-19.
Olshey let free agents Aldridge, Matthews, Robin Lopez and Arron Afflalo walk, and locked up his lone remaining starter, star point guard Damian Lillard, with a five-year maximum contract to be the centerpiece of Portland’s rebuilding effort. He signed two more athletic young frontcourt players, Al-Farouq Aminu and Ed Davis, to deals that pay about $7 million per year, a relative pittance with the salary cap about to explode. He picked up versatile forward Maurice Harkless, who’d fallen out of favor with the Orlando Magic, for almost literally nothing, and watched him become part of the team’s starting lineup late in the season.
All told, Olshey put together the NBA’s cheapest and third-youngest roster, and nearly all his bets paid off. Terry Stotts’ staff coaxed development out of all the young pieces, Lillard and C.J. McCollum became one of the NBA’s most exciting and highest-scoring backcourts, and Portland stunned the league to win 44 games and the No. 5 seed in the West. Now, they’re taking advantage of the opportunities afforded them by injury, finding themselves in the heat of a second-round playoff battle with the defending champion Warriors.
And yet, it was Buford’s work that earned the widest array of praise from his peers.
After following a first-round loss to the Los Angeles Clippers by watching Golden State’s small-ball sniping herald the dawning of a new age in the West, Buford flipped Tiago Splitter to the Atlanta Hawks to create the cap space necessary to take a run at a difference-making free agent. He maxed out Leonard, kept 3-and-D stalwart Danny Green with a below-market deal, and returned legends Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili on team-friendly contracts.
Those moves set the stage for the summer’s signature signing: a four-year, $84 million pact for Aldridge, the culmination of both a courtship devoid of pretense and years of careful cap management. From Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News:
Even as Buford and his front office staff have spent capital to construct a roster capable of competing for championships, they did so with one eye on the day when an aging team might need to reboot.
“My complete faith and trust in R.C. is never going to change, because of the track record he has,” said Popovich, who is also team president. “He’s always thinking not just for the next year and the next two years, but the next three years, the next seven years, that type of thing.” […]
It is no accident the Spurs enter July with 10 contracts timed to come off the books at precisely the same time.
“We put the team together with that in mind, that this year we’d have all the free agents,” Popovich said, “so we can decide what we want to do moving forward as far as the makeup of the team.”
And, as if putting the finishing touches on a years-in-the-making plan to snare the top free agent in the league wasn’t good enough, Buford also got David West to take an $11 million haircut to become the game’s most overqualified seventh man, gave San Antonio’s wing rotation some juice with the out-of-nowhere addition of athletic swingman Jonathon Simmons, and introduced the NBA-watching world to 7-foot-3 folk hero Boban Marjanovic. If that’s not worth some kind of trophy, then man, I don’t know what is.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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