Each year as training camp begins, NBA.com’s John Schuhmann sends out a survey to all 30 general managers in the league asking them a variety of questions about the upcoming season. This year, the GM survey features 50 questions, ranging from who will win the title to who the best passer in the league is, and while a lot of them are unsurprising (spoiler: the Celtics get 25 of the 30 votes for who will win it all), there are always some intriguing insights into how the most powerful front office personnel view the league.
Here, we will highlight the three most interesting things we learned from the GM survey, starting with how Boston views the East thanks to the process of elimination.
Who does Brad Stevens see as the biggest threat in the East?
The expectation from GMs is that the Finals will be a Celtics-Thunder series, as Boston got 97 percent of the votes (29 of 30) to win the East. Given the rules of the survey are you can’t vote for your own team/player, that means the lone other first place vote belonged to Brad Stevens, who, perhaps surprisingly, picked the Cleveland Cavaliers as the team most likely to win the East other than his Boston squad. That Stevens’ pick is the Cavs over the Knicks or Sixers, who were the most frequent picks for second and third, is pretty interesting, and you could look at it one of two ways. It is either a pretty strong vote of confidence that Kenny Atkinson is going to get this Cavs team all on the same page this coming year to hit their full potential, or a little jab at the two teams most consider the closest to Boston in the East after busy offseasons.
The rest of the league is very high on the Thunder
The Thunder come up a lot in the survey, as it’s clear other GMs believe OKC’s run to the 1-seed and the second round last year was only the beginning. In the West, OKC got 80 percent of the votes (24 votes), with Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix all getting two votes each, and they got 4 votes to win it all. Going along with the expectation they’ll be the best in the West, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander earned the most votes (12) for MVP honors, beating out Luka Doncic (9) for the status as the front office favorite for the award. Jalen Williams narrowly led the selections for breakout player this year (4 votes), while Alex Caruso was picked as the most underrated addition this summer (7 votes) and the Thunder topped the Knicks and Sixers in voting for who had the best offseason (11 votes). That last point is particularly interesting as New York and Philly made huge splash moves, with Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges heading to the Knicks via trade and Paul George signing with the Sixers. Even so, the Thunder being able to add Isaiah Hartenstein and Alex Caruso without giving up a single rotation player to do so earned OKC the majority of the votes for best offseason.
Reed Sheppard is the rookie the rest of the league believes in
This was not a particularly well-regarded rookie class at the top, but the name that stood out from this year’s polling of the league is Houston’s pick at No. 3 overall, Reed Sheppard. Sheppard got 50 percent of the vote (15 votes) for Rookie of the Year and 43 percent of the vote (13 votes) for who will be the best player from this rookie class in five years. That’s a pretty significant margin for a guy who went third in the Draft, and I’m sure most all of these GMs saw Sheppard in person at Summer League where he looked phenomenal. It also, for me, adds to the intrigue of Houston who has the deepest roster of interesting rookie contract guys in the league but finding minutes and roles for all of them isn’t obvious. That said, clearly the rest of the NBA figures Sheppard will find pretty firm footing in Houston’s rotation and do so quickly, as that’s a must if he’s going to win Rookie of the Year.