NBA Front Office Rankings: Part 2

Earlier this week, we ranked the NBA’s top 15 front offices. Today, we conclude these rankings with the bottom 15. Before kicking off the first half of these rankings, we covered the traits that tend to make a successful front office. Since we’re covering the less successful front offices today, let’s talk about the ways in which poorly run teams tend not to embody those traits:

Key Characteristics of Poorly Run Front Offices

• Seemingly operate without a bigger-picture vision. Individual moves may work, but they do not work in conjunction with their other decisions as part of an identifiable plan.
• Are uncreative. This can manifest in a dozen ways, but essentially, they rarely execute trades or contracts in unconventional ways or successfully buck league-wide trends.
• Are stubborn. They fixate on a single player type or a cookie-cutter roster archetype without being willing to pivot when doing so proves necessary.
• Are not self-aware. They misunderstand where they stand in the broader league landscape.
• Their organization is not fully aligned. The owner has a history of meddling with basketball matters. Disagreements between front office and coaches spill into the public.
• The team is not willing to spend what it takes to win, either on player salaries or other critical resources.
• Irresponsibility. Poorly run teams act rashly in the name of short-term improvement.

The basic purpose of this exercise is to determine which front offices you would want to run your favorite team if you could make that choice. These are the front offices I likely would not recommend if given the choice.

Ranking the Bottom 15 Front Offices

30. Sacramento Kings

The Sacramento Kings had the worst record in the NBA with a potentially generational draft looming. This is a team that has missed the playoffs in 19 of the past 20 drafts. Losing is in their DNA at this point. If they just could have kept doing what they’ve been doing for the past two decades for another five weeks, they would have ended the season with the league’s worst record. The Kings finished the season on an 8-10 stretch and fell to No. 7 in the draft.

The Kings don’t punish teams for bad luck, but they certainly punish teams for bad vision. No lottery team misunderstood the assignment more than the Kings did. In a spring defined by discourse about how to fix tanking, the Kings were the tanker that didn’t actually know how to tank. They were just naturally bad. Even despite a late-season surge, the Kings still finished 25th in rebounding, 26th in offense, and 28th in defense. They had a negative turnover margin and a negative free-throw margin.

This team had no redeeming qualities last season, which begs the question of why was Doug Christie retained as head coach? Remember, losing is no longer beneficial, and is in fact actively harmful thanks to the relegation zone.

Virtually every big contract this team signs or acquires turns out to be a mistake. They used cap space to renegotiate and extend Domantas Sabonis in 2023 rather than actually improving their first playoff team since 2006. They acquired Zach LaVine in the De’Aaron Fox trade instead of triggering a sorely needed rebuild and are now stuck with LaVine’s contract. Cleveland was eager to move De’Andre Hunter’s contract. The Kings couldn’t get appropriate draft value for Keon Ellis because they had to use him to dump Dennis Schröder, whom they signed eight months earlier. They couldn’t trade Malik Monk’s contract last offseason when they wanted to create more minutes for Russell Westbrook, so they just signed Westbrook anyway. They’re eating $10 million in dead DeMar DeRozan money for a contract that made no sense when it was signed.

There have been a couple of promising marginal finds lately. Nique Clifford at No. 24, Maxime Raynaud at No. 42, and the undrafted Dylan Cardwell are all legitimate NBA players. But come on. The Kings had the Coach of the Year (Mike Brown) and the Executive of the Year (Monte McNair) in the same season in 2023. Both were fired within two years, and Brown just won a championship in his first season with his new employer. This is rarified dysfunctional air, and it gives the Kings a stranglehold on the No. 30 slot.

29. New Orleans Pelicans

The Pelicans walked away from the Derik Queen trade about as unscathed as possible. Neither their pick nor Milwaukee’s jumped into the top four. It was still an enormously irresponsible decision, especially since, had the Pelicans controlled the pick themselves, they could have tried to tank it into the top four. But Queen and Kingston Flemings are probably roughly equivalent as prospects, with Queen perhaps having more value by virtue of playing the scarcer position.

Failing to protect their own 2026 pick wasn’t even the most irresponsible component of the Queen acquisition, and notably, the No. 8 pick wasn’t even the highest 2026 draft pick they traded in pursuit of Queen. In order to get the No. 23 overall pick that they also sent to Atlanta, New Orleans had to trade the Indiana Pacers control over their own 2026 pick back. They made that trade during the 2025 NBA Finals. While Tyrese Haliburton was still playing. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose by making that trade before Indiana’s season ended, and the Pelicans were punished for their recklessness by Haliburton’s torn Achilles.

They traded the No. 5 pick in 2026 for the No. 23 pick in 2025, and then packaged the No. 23 pick in 2025 with No. 8 in 2026 for No. 13 in 2025. They didn’t add their first veteran on a standard contract this offseason until Aug. 17… when they signed Trendon Watford for the partially guaranteed minimum. They might have had the financial flexibility below the luxury-tax line to do more if they hadn’t taken on Jordan Poole’s contract last offseason. That deal got them Saddiq Bey, whose value contract expires before the Pelicans figure to be good enough to benefit from it. Jamahl Mosley is a strange choice to coach a team that badly needs offensive creativity to make the clunky Zion Williamson-Derik Queen fit work. He couldn’t figure out how to make the similarly awkward but more talented Paolo Banchero-Franz Wagner fit work in Orlando. It still isn’t clear why they didn’t just want to keep NBA Finals hero Jose Alvarado. Oh yea, and they’ve never paid the luxury.

The thing keeping the Pelicans out of the No. 30 slot, and really the only thing this team has going for it, is that Troy Weaver at least has a reasonable track record of identifying talent. Getting Bey wasn’t worth paying Poole, but Bey is a valuable player. Queen outperformed his draft slot. The Detroit Pistons just won 60 games with a core Weaver drafted.

But identifying an actual plan here is next to impossible. Running back a 26-win team makes no sense. Even if you could justify the individual decision to keep any single player, the whole here is in desperate need of a reboot. Queen and Williamson are defensively incompatible and have redundant offensive skill sets. Trey Murphy’s trade value will never be higher than it is now, while he has several years of cost control left on his deal. This team has minimal shooting and only one notable defender in Herb Jones. Until Dumars and Weaver prove they have a real vision for this team, the Pelicans are doomed to the No. 29 slot.

28. Portland Trail Blazers

These rankings have never been especially kind to Portland, but the Blazers had slowly been rising up the board from No. 25 to No. 23 to No. 19 at the deadline. Joe Cronin’s two biggest moves, trading for Jerami Grant and signing Jerami Grant, were solid but not spectacular. He also signed a couple of marginal veterans in Noah Vonleh and Harrison Barnes, but those signings were also not very impactful. The Blazers’ biggest issue is that they’ve never really been able to find a legitimate cornerstone player, and until they do, they’ll struggle to climb out of the bottom 15.

The Blazers’ front office has been criticized for being too cheap, and it’s hard to argue with that assessment. They’ve consistently ranked near the bottom of the league in terms of salary cap space, and that’s had a major impact on their ability to attract and retain top talent. They’ve also been criticized for being too passive, and it’s hard to argue with that assessment as well. They’ve rarely made a big splash in free agency, and when they have, it’s often been a mistake.

The Blazers’ biggest problem, though, is that they’re stuck in a cycle of mediocrity. They’re not good enough to be a contender, but they’re not bad enough to be a tanking team. They’re stuck in limbo, and until they can find a way to break out of that cycle, they’ll continue to struggle to climb out of the bottom 15.