The Three Largest Takeaways From The 2024-25 NBA GM Survey
Every year as coaching camp begins, NBA.com’s John Schuhmann sends out a survey to all 30 common managers within the league asking them quite a lot of questions concerning the upcoming season. This yr, the GM survey options 50 questions, starting from who will win the title to who one of the best passer within the league is, and whereas lots of them are unsurprising (spoiler: the Celtics get 25 of the 30 votes for who will win all of it), there are all the time some intriguing insights into how probably the most highly effective entrance workplace personnel view the league.
Right here, we are going to spotlight the three most attention-grabbing issues we realized from the GM survey, beginning with how Boston views the East because of the method of elimination.
Who does Brad Stevens see as the most important menace within the East?
The expectation from GMs is that the Finals will likely be a Celtics-Thunder sequence, as Boston received 97 % of the votes (29 of 30) to win the East. Given the principles of the survey are you’ll be able to’t vote on your personal staff/participant, meaning the lone different first place vote belonged to Brad Stevens, who, maybe surprisingly, picked the Cleveland Cavaliers because the staff almost definitely to win the East apart from his Boston squad. That Stevens’ choose is the Cavs over the Knicks or Sixers, who have been probably the most frequent picks for second and third, is fairly attention-grabbing, and you might have a look at it one among two methods. It’s both a reasonably robust vote of confidence that Kenny Atkinson goes to get this Cavs staff all on the identical web page this coming yr to hit their full potential, or somewhat jab on the two groups most take into account the closest to Boston within the East after busy offseasons.
The remainder of the league may be very excessive on the Thunder
The Thunder come up quite a bit within the survey, because it’s clear different GMs consider OKC’s run to the 1-seed and the second spherical final yr was solely the start. Within the West, OKC received 80 % of the votes (24 votes), with Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix all getting two votes every, they usually received 4 votes to win all of it. Going together with the expectation they’ll be one of the best within the West, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander earned probably the most votes (12) for MVP honors, beating out Luka Doncic (9) for the standing because the entrance workplace favourite for the award. Jalen Williams narrowly led the choices for breakout participant this yr (4 votes), whereas Alex Caruso was picked as probably the most underrated addition this summer time (7 votes) and the Thunder topped the Knicks and Sixers in voting for who had one of the best offseason (11 votes). That final level is especially attention-grabbing as New York and Philly made enormous splash strikes, with Karl-Anthony Cities and Mikal Bridges heading to the Knicks through commerce and Paul George signing with the Sixers. Even so, the Thunder having the ability to add Isaiah Hartenstein and Alex Caruso with out giving up a single rotation participant to take action earned OKC the vast majority of the votes for finest offseason.
Reed Sheppard is the rookie the remainder of the league believes in
This was not a very well-regarded rookie class on the prime, however the title that stood out from this yr’s polling of the league is Houston’s choose at No. 3 total, Reed Sheppard. Sheppard received 50 % of the vote (15 votes) for Rookie of the 12 months and 43 % of the vote (13 votes) for who would be the finest participant from this rookie class in 5 years. That’s a reasonably vital margin for a man who went third within the Draft, and I’m positive most all of those GMs noticed Sheppard in individual at Summer season League the place he seemed phenomenal. It additionally, for me, provides to the intrigue of Houston who has the deepest roster of attention-grabbing rookie contract guys within the league however discovering minutes and roles for all of them isn’t apparent. That stated, clearly the remainder of the NBA figures Sheppard will discover fairly agency footing in Houston’s rotation and achieve this rapidly, as that’s a should if he’s going to win Rookie of the 12 months.
