NBA 40 Under 40: The executives, coaches and agents shaping the basketball world and the future

For the first time, The Athletic is rolling out a 40 under 40 list for the NBA. It hasn’t been easy to put together. What exactly makes someone deserving of being included on such a list?

There are no hard-and-fast rules. The women and men who have made it in this inaugural list have landed here for their acumen, their talent, their influence, their promise, power and, of course, their age. If there is one thing axiomatic about a 40 under 40 list, it’s that you have to be a certain age.

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This list was put together after much deliberation and lots of discussions with our NBA reporters and with sources around the league. It is made up of some of the NBA’s brightest front-office executives, coaches, agents and people in the league office and players’ union, as well as elsewhere. Some of the selections will be obvious, some will be names you might not have heard of before. Some are head coaches and lead basketball operations already, others seem on track to do so in the future.

Media (to avoid navel-gazing) and active players (because then the whole list would be players) were excluded. To be eligible, any person had to be under 40 as of Dec. 1, 2021, when work on this list began.

During the course of this week we also roll out stories on some of the members of the 40 under 40 club, as well Q&As with others. Keep coming back this week to read them all.

The list is presented in alphabetical order. 

Brock Aller, 36, Knicks VP of basketball and strategic planning

Aller has increased New York’s reliance on analytics in his two seasons with the organization, and the Knicks have earned some appreciation for several shrewd moves over recent years. Aller’s strategy team has expanded since he came to the Knicks after a decade in Cleveland, where he earned a reputation as a bright mind, and his name seems like one to watch for future front-office openings.

Koby Altman, 39, Cavaliers president of basketball operations

Altman has not only withstood the heat in Cleveland, but also turned the organization around in his fifth season. The Cavaliers could land a top-four seed in the East this spring and seem loaded for the future with Darius Garland, Evan Mobley — both Altman lottery picks — and Jarrett Allen, a savvy acquisition last season who has blossomed into an All-Star. Altman became the first general manager to garner a contract extension from Dan Gilbert and then also earned a promotion, no small feat since he took over under the gun as the team faced a trade demand from Kyrie Irving and lost LeBron James in free agency the next summer. Altman has the Cavaliers positioned well for the future with a mix of smart drafting and personnel moves, and Cleveland looks to be an intriguing team for years to come.

Tommy Balcetis, 36, Nuggets assistant general manager

Balcetis has risen up the ranks in Denver. He started there in 2013, when now team president Tim Connelly took over, initiating the franchise’s analytics department. Balcetis has grown his portfolio over the years to include strategy and even scouting. He also has an interesting backstory that took him from Lithuania to Harvard to consulting before he made it to the NBA. The Nuggets have seen executives leave for promotions in recent years and Calvin Booth has already interviewed to run his own team in recent years, so Balcetis could soon climb again.

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For more on the incredible journey that led Balcetis to his current role, you can read our full profile here.

Kirk Berger, 31, National Basketball Players Association associate counsel

Berger, who has been with the union since 2015, is a key lawyer for the NBPA and a jack-of-all-trades who has his hands in lots of areas. One agent still talks about the work he did in helping players navigate the jock tax years ago. He’s involved in collective bargaining. He works with agents to help them navigate the CBA and salary cap, and helps them with contracts, including acting as a sounding board when new ones get negotiated.

Spencer Breecker, 35, CAA Sports’ head of coaches and executives division

Breecker’s summers are busy. If there is an open coaching search, the agent is likely to have a client involved. He’s been with CAA Sports since the agency bought Kauffman Sports Management Group, where he was managing partner. He represents a number of head coaches and lead basketball ops executives around the league, including Monty Williams, Michael Malone, Taylor Jenkins and Ime Udoka.

Austin Brown, 36, CAA Sports’ co-head of basketball

Brown has become one of the most prominent player agents in the NBA. He represents Zion Williamson, Donovan Mitchell and Jaren Jackson Jr., among other clients, and he’s reached the top of the industry after he first began his career as an analyst at JP Morgan. He’s so well-thought-of that some around the league have also placed him as a future general manger, if he wanted to go in that direction.

“Without question, Austin has the opportunity to be one of the greatest agents in the history of the basketball business,” CAA Sports co-head Howard Nuchow told SportsBusinessJournal in 2020.

Joey Buss (37), Lakers VP of research and development and Jesse Buss (34), Lakers assistant general manager

The Buss brothers have had emerging voices in the Lakers front office since Magic Johnson exited the organization. They have contributed to some recent under-the-radar finds for L.A. — like second-round pick Talen Horton-Tucker and the undrafted Austin Reaves — with Jesse’s scouting portfolio and Joey overseeing player development. They also are positioned as the future of the Lakers ownership group behind their older sister, Jeanie.

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Mark Daigneault (37), Thunder head coach

Daigneault became one of the youngest head coaches in the NBA when Oklahoma City hired him prior to the 2020-21 season. He has made a quick rise to the position and showed enough potential to get hired by Sam Presti at just 35. He was a college assistant before the Thunder brought him on in 2014; he subsequently spent four seasons as the head coach of the organization’s G League team. The Thunder are just 41-91 with him at the front of the bench but he has helped lead a very youthful roster through two lean years as the franchise has focused more on development during his term.

Will Dawkins, 35, Thunder VP of basketball operations

Dawkins seems like the next Thunder front-office executive to get an opportunity to run his own team, following in the footsteps of Rob Hennigan and Troy Weaver, and has already been identified as a potential future GM. He started in the video room and has since spent 14 seasons in Oklahoma City, and now has an integral role alongside Sam Presti.

James Dunleavy, 34, Excel Sports Management agent

Dunleavy made a big splash last spring when he signed Cade Cunningham, the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA draft. He also represents Saddiq Bey, the up-and-coming Pistons wing who went No. 19 in the 2020 draft. The younger brother of former NBA veteran Mike Dunleavy Jr. and son of longtime head coach Mike Dunleavy Sr., James is now making a name for himself as an ascending agent.

Katherine Evans, 36, Monumental Sports & Entertainment VP research and information systems

Evans is the first woman to lead an analytics group in the NBA and leads analytics for all of the teams in Monumental’s portfolio, including the Wizards and the WNBA’s Mystics. She came to Washington after two years with the Raptors. That was her first job in sports, after working in health care and earning a Ph.D. in biostatistics from Harvard along with a Master’s degree.

“When we finally got a chance to spend time with her and really pick her brain and listen to her in terms of thinking and vision and, frankly, passion for the game of basketball, which is a big criterion for us, an important criterion, that’s when things really started to click,” former Monumental Basketball president Sashi Brown told the Washington Post. “We became even more interested in her and really impressed by her.”

For more on Evans and her path from epidemiology to basketball, you can read our full profile here.

Landry Fields, 33, Hawks assistant general manager

Fields could be a general manager soon. He was already under consideration for several jobs last offseason and is likely to garner more this upcoming one too. He’s had a glide path since the end of a five-year playing career for the Knicks and Raptors, when he made the transition to the front office with the Spurs and then came over to the Hawks in 2020. It took him just five years to go from the end of his days on the court, in 2015, to assistant GM.

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“I think it’s important to relate with the players, establish solid relationships with the players, and with Landry, those are certainly his strengths,” Hawks president Travis Schlenk told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “That was a big draw. I think he’s got a very bright future in this league.”

David Fogel, 32, National Basketball Coaches Association executive director

Fogel oversees the vast association of NBA coaches, which has roughly 225 active NBA head and assistant coaches. The association also helps many other non-active coaches. With Fogel as its executive director, the association advocates for its coaches across the league on a number of issues, from safety to work conditions to hiring practices, and leads its members in charitable endeavors.

Taylor Jenkins, 37, Grizzlies head coach

Jenkins has a shot to win Coach of the Year this season and has been a key reason Memphis has surged to the third-best record in the West. It would be the second consecutive playoff appearance for the Grizzlies under Jenkins, who has helped push the organization forward in its rapid transition from the Grit n’ Grind era to this current iteration fronted by Ja Morant.

Mike Gansey, 39, Cavaliers general manager

Gansey is a part of the rejuvenated Cavaliers and has been with the organization since 2011. An Ohio high school basketball star, he worked his way up after playing at West Virginia, winning G League Executive of the Year in 2017 before making it to assistant general manager. While Cleveland has flourished this year, Gansey earned another promotion, this time to GM, last month.

“Mike has been an incredible resource to me and this organization,” Altman said. “And his work behind the scenes gives me great confidence that he is ready to take on more of a leadership role.”

Jason Glushon, 36, president and founder Glushon Sports Management

Glushon represents a number of high-profile clients like Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday and Franz Wagner, and has already helped four clients sign contracts worth more than $100 million. He started his own agency in 2016, at just 30, after spending a number of years as an agent at Wasserman.

“He is of the highest character and when you combine that with his intelligence and grit, there are no limits on his future,” Arn Tellem, the former super agent and now vice chair at Palace Sports & Entertainment, told Sports Business Journal.

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Bryson Graham, 35, Pelicans assistant general manager

When Bryson Graham started his professional career in the NBA 12 years ago he was just an intern. The organization in New Orleans was still called the Hornets. But in the time since Graham has made a steady rise through the Pelicans front office, gaining more responsibility and learning from the various colleagues he had along the way.Now, as assistant general manager, he is a key person in a front office led by executive VP of basketball operations David Griffin and general manager Trajan Langdon, especially when it comes to the draft, where the Pelicans have found some gems in recent years like Herb Jones.”I think he’s really good,” one NBA executive said. “He’s smart, he works hard and he knows his shit. (He) will be a GM in the next five years.” Graham took some time to discuss his career as part of The Athletic’s 40 under 40 series.

In your time with the Pelicans, what do you think you’ve kind of learned working in different parts of the front office, in different roles?

I started out, obviously, as an intern, like you mentioned. Dell Demps hired me out of Texas A&M, where I played college ball. I did two years, literally, of all the grunt work. I was doing coffee runs. I had to make sure the snack room was put together. You know, we had certain snacks in there. I was shuttling free agents to and from the airport. I was the primary note-taker in all the meetings and things of that nature. I did that for two years. After that, I went to the coaching side and Monty Williams — who is a mentor, a big brother, a friend of mine – brought me on and that, I believe, was essential for me coming back to the front office. Because when I took the head video coordinator position, now you’re in all the coaches’ meetings. You’re on the floor with the guys and you see basketball from a totally different perspective. I truly believe that working on the coaching side and being in the video room is really, really important when it comes to just player evaluation and personnel. It’s not like a must, but it was really, really important and I think that really helped me in my growth as a scout and as a player personnel evaluator. I did that for two years and then I went back to the front office. I got to see things from both sides, and I have worn quite a few hats. Also, we had a player development liaison from the players to the business side; I did that job as well for a year. So in terms of embodying all those different aspects, I’ve gotten a really good opportunity to kind of see what, one, the day-to-day is on the coaching side and what matters the most. And also having that long-term view from a front office perspective. So that’s kind of been my path to this point. And then when Dell got let go and we had a new regime, obviously with Griffin and Trajan coming in. I think that kind of helped. With Griff, with him being even more comfortable with me and my role right now.

You can read the full conversation with Graham here.

Sachin Gupta, 39, Timberwolves executive VP of basketball operations

Gupta took over Minnesota’s basketball operations this fall when the club fired Gersson Rosas, and became the first person of Indian descent to run a front office. He already had a significant voice with the team before that, moving to the franchise three seasons ago. He nearly earned the Kings general manager job in 2020 before falling just short, continuing a steady move up across the league after working in Philadelphia and Houston. Gupta has degrees from MIT and Stanford, and is well-known for creating ESPN’s Trade Machine, though his career has progressed far past being an answer to that trivia question.

“He’s incredible at all these different things, but he truly doesn’t believe that he is,” Ben Falk, a former NBA executive, said. “It’s an incredible quality because it shields him from errors of overconfidence.”

Will Hardy, 34, Celtics assistant coach

Hardy is part of the coaching staff in Boston that’s helped the Celtics right the ship midseason and become one of the hottest teams in the league, but he’s been on the radar for a while. He spent two seasons as Gregg Popovich’s lead assistant in San Antonio before leaving for Ime Udoka’s staff last summer. Hardy interviewed with the Knicks in 2020 and was a candidate for the Thunder’s opening. He has drawn attention as one of the more promising coaching candidates in the league and could have his own head coaching job in the future, and he has already been rumored as a potential successor to Popovich with the Spurs.

“Will Hardy is a talented, young basketball mind who has earned a great deal of respect from everyone in the organization thanks to his knowledge, spirit and personality,” Popovich said.

Jon Horst, 38, Bucks general manager

The case for Horst is pretty simple: He’s the general manager who put together the reigning NBA champions. The Bucks won the title last summer thanks to some savvy moves by Horst. He traded a bushel of picks for Jrue Holiday. He re-signed Khris Middleton to a five-year, $178 million deal and kept Brook Lopez in 2019. He brought in Bobby Portis. He was the GM who got Giannis Antetokounmpo to stay in 2020, no small feat in this era of perpetual star movement. Horst took over the front office at 34 and has a ring fewer than five years later.

Scott Kaufman-Ross, 35, NBA senior VP, head of gaming and new business ventures

Kaufman-Ross has been at the forefront of the NBA’s lean into sports betting and his fingerprints are all over it. He helped the league create NBABet, a multi-platform enterprise that includes a betting show on NBA TV and new sections on the league’s website and app, also helping the NBA acquire new sports betting partners. He also created new business ventures, a new department at the league office.

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Zack Kleiman, 33, Grizzlies executive VP of basketball operations

Kleiman has built the Grizzlies into a young, exciting team that could be dangerous for years to come. Not bad for a lawyer who transitioned to the basketball side after he got hired in Memphis. He made difficult moves soon after taking over, including trading franchise legend Mike Conley after just months on the job, and pivoted the team to its current phase. He hired coach Taylor Jenkins and made Ja Morant his first draft pick. Memphis has drafted well under his guidance, with Desmond Bane as the most high-profile example. He is one of the frontrunners for Executive of the Year.

For more on the high regard Kleiman is held in and how confident he feels in his Grizzlies squad, you can read our full profile here.

Kirk Lacob, 33, Warriors executive VP of basketball operations

Lacob has filled a number of roles in Golden State, steadily climbing up through the front office over the last 12 years. While his father, Joe Lacob, bought the team in 2010, Kirk has put in the time and made his way up from director of basketball operations. His work establishing a G League team for the Warriors has been a calling card with him, and he is now one of the primary voices alongside Bob Myers while holding a role on the business side too. Kirk is also well-positioned to take over the franchise as the successor to his father. Lacob took some time to discuss his role as part of The Athletic’s 40 under 40 series, and you can read the full interview here.

You started in player development, whether it was with Santa Cruz and then that seemed to be like a focal point of yours during your career. Obviously, you guys have several high-profile young players now. Is it refreshing to have player development be like this integral part of the organization again in a way that it seems like you know for obvious reasons it wasn’t during the dynasty days?

Every team goes through life cycles, obviously. And in reality, we always felt player development was important, even when we had a lot of vets and not a lot of young guys, but it was a different form of player development. Like we really view player development as how can you make a player the best version of themselves? Now, the most growth obviously comes when they’re younger, but there’s a lot of growth that can happen to players who are more veteran. We’ve seen it with Andrew Wiggins the last couple years. The growth he’s taken in kind of the middle part of his career.

Even as guys get towards the end of their career, sometimes you see something really changed in their game, the way they play. And then the other part of player development that we don’t talk a lot about, because it’s not as sexy and interesting, is there’s a lot of off-court stuff that goes into this. To be a great athlete, you kind of have to ultimately have your life together off the court. We’ve seen so many times where this trips players up or it gets in the way, and they go through a slump. A lot of what I did early on was about helping players get what they needed off the court so that they could perform on the court. The best part about it is I had a lot of this early on, and it was a lot of times felt like you know the one person trying to grab a bunch of other people from other departments and help them create a vision. Now we’ve got really a large department. We’ve got someone on the coaching staff who is solely kind of dedicated as the director of player development and their job is to make sure players have development courses at every part of their career, and that the coaching staff is on the same kind of alignment as the performance team because that’s a whole other player element is your physical performance.

On the front-office side, we’ve got a whole group and we call them team development, but part of team development is player development. And we have a whole silo kind of associated to that. So yeah, it is refreshing and fun to see where it’s come from. I remember when I first started doing some player-development stuff with the league and I remember them giving us feedback after my first year doing it and they were like, ‘Yeah, you guys were the best player development this year.’ And I sat there in shock, and I was like, ‘That’s impossible. We’re terrible at it.’ Like, ‘If you’re telling me this is best in the league, this is awful.’ As somebody who is at this point that 23 years old, who’s been in the league for two years like you cannot tell me this is good enough. We’re not doing enough if we’re the best. So it’s been really cool to see.

Charles Lee, 37, Bucks assistant coach

Lee looks like he’ll be an NBA head coach soon — maybe even next season. He’s been a deputy for Mike Budenholzer since their days in Atlanta and was on the bench when Milwaukee won the title last summer. He also attracted significant interest for jobs running other teams, being tied to openings for four teams, and finished as the runner-up for the job in New Orleans. It seems like just a matter of time for him. Lee took some time to talk about his journey and path to becoming a head coach as part of The Athletic’s 40 under 40 series, and you can read the full interview here.

After that, it seemed like you were interviewing with several teams for a head coaching job. It looked like, at least according to reports, that you were close in New Orleans. What did you take away from the interview process and what do you have your eyes on now when it comes to being a head coach one day?

Definitely learned how to accept rejection. In all seriousness, number one, it was just like an honor to be in these conversations. To be so young but to know that my hard work is paying off, I’m just kind of staying focused on just being the best assistant coach that I can possibly be at a place and not worry too much about this self-promotion, or doing anything extra. Just really working hard and diving into whatever responsibilities the team needs. Then I would say on top of it, just accepting feedback and understanding. ‘What am I going to have to do to grow so that one day I can be in the seat of being a head coach for one of these organizations?’ There’s only 30 of them and it was kind of tough to keep hearing no. But after self-reflection, you take the feedback, and now it’s just my responsibility to keep trying to grow in those areas that they think that I can show some improvement in.

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Fara Leff, 38, Klutch Sports chief operating officer

Leff doesn’t have a front-facing role for the company like agent Rich Paul, but she has helped build it into one of the top agencies in the league. She has been at Klutch since its inception in 2012 as one of the first people alongside Paul and has helped play a vital role in launching and growing the company, working behind the scenes in endeavors like its deal with United Talent Agency and by helping put its pro day on ESPN.

“She’s bright and she brings an energy and ideas and creativity,” Lakers owner Jeanie Buss told the Los Angeles Times. “I love seeing women in this business take on a role like a COO of Klutch Sports. That’s so impressive. I see when they talk about the future of our business. I look at a Fara and go, ‘if I could have been part of paving the way for her to choose to get into sports, that makes me proud.’”

Monte McNair, 37, Kings general manager

McNair is in his second season as Kings general manager and trying to get the team to the playoffs for the first time since 2006. He’s already instituted changes in Sacramento, putting his imprint on the roster. He swung a massive trade last month, sending Tyrese Haliburton to Indiana for All-Star Domantas Sabonis. McNair took over in Sacramento after 13 seasons in Houston’s front office.

“One thing that’s really helped us is (that) we have a very, very clear goal,” McNair said in November. “We want to get this organization back to the playoffs. We want to get back there (and) that helps (that) we have a singular focus.”

Tori Miller, 31, College Park Skyhawks general manager

In 2020, Miller was the first woman to be named a G League general manager. She runs the Atlanta Hawks’ G League team and is part of the front office in Atlanta, too.

“We want to create something that’s special here, whether that’s for our players or for our staff,” Miller told The Atlanta Voice. “When you come to College Park, you’re able to see the future stars of tomorrow. For our players, putting them in situations where they can develop both on the court and off the court as men, and for our staff, to help them develop. The G League is a starting point for them, but they have higher aspirations for their career.”

Amber Nichols, 29, Capital City Go-Go general manager

Nichols took over the Wizards’ G League team last January, becoming the second woman to run a G League team. They now have the fourth-best record in the league, while managing an extraordinary year in the league where the franchise has had to find and shuttle players up from the G League to the NBA during the Omicron outbreak.

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“She has done an amazing job with her time with the Go-Go, but you know, I would consider it part of the Wizards,” Wizards president Tommy Sheppard told NBC Sports. “You know, she scouts for us. She’s in charge of very big investments … the assignment players, the exhibit 10s, the two-way players, that’s under her. Her responsibilities are great, but I know her skill level far exceeds anything we could possibly imagine.”

Eric Khoury, 33, Raptors assistant coach, and Sergi Oliva, 38, Jazz assistant coach

Khoury and Oliva are at the forefront of an emerging trend across the league marrying analytics with on-the-sidelines coaches. Khoury made the transition to the Raptors coaching staff after time in the analytics department and went back-and-forth to marry the two (which is only tangentially related to his graduate school studies: experimental fluid dynamics).

“He’s very smart, and he’s got a great tactical mind when it comes down to just thinking creatively about the game and understanding what wins and what loses, and what has impact, and what is just kind of window dressing,” Raptors VP of basketball strategy Keith Boyarsky said. “I think he’s as good as anybody I’ve ever met at that. But he also has a really great way about him. He’s very easy to talk to, and very calm and considered, and doesn’t rattle very easily.”

Oliva spent six seasons with the 76ers, where he was the VP and director of analytics and strategy. Now, he’s in his second on the bench behind Quin Snyder, where he can surely put his Ph.D. in computational complexity to work.

“He has a unique skillset,” Snyder said when Oliva came aboard. “He helped build their analytics program. He’s teaching me as we go.”

Jeff Peterson, 33, Nets assistant general manager

Peterson is a key cog in Brooklyn’s front office, where he oversees amateur scouting. The Nets have had wins in recent drafts, including nabbing Cam Thomas with the 27th pick last July. Peterson has already attracted interest for a general manager position — he interviewed with the Pistons in 2020 — and seems on his way to running his own team one day.

“There’s people who can have honest conversations, peer-to-peer — I could have a conversation with the GM, players can talk to players, coaches talk to coaches. Jeff is a rare breed that can talk across platforms,” Nets general manager Sean Marks said. “So he can have a very honest conversation with a player. He’s had that multiple times. Get the message across, he’s not afraid. He’ll have the same conversations with coaches. He’ll have the same conversation with the front office. He’ll have the same conversation with our ownership group. So when you’re able to like be true to who you are across all of that and not be afraid. That’s a talent.”

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You can read our full profile of Peterson and his one-of-a-kind path here.

Adrian Stelly, 37, Converse director of sports marketing

Stelly moved over from Nike in 2019 to run sports marketing there. A number of high-profile NBA players followed him there, too. Draymond Green and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander went with him, giving Converse two pillars as it tries to build itself up again. A former walk-on at Oregon, Stelly has become a well-known and successful marketing executive. “In about five years people are gonna talk about him as the next Nico Harrison,” a league executive said.

For more on Stelly’s rise, his role at Converse and what his future could look like, you can read our profile here.

Matt Tellem, 33, Nets director of strategic planning

Tellem may slide under the radar in a talented and busy front office but he’s taken on a growing portfolio on the strategic side in Brooklyn, while also helping with the franchise’s G League team.  The son of former super-agent and now Pistons vice chairman Arn Tellem, he has been steeped in the business since a young age. Tellem has been with the Nets since 2011.

Kristi Toliver, 35, Mavericks assistant coach

Toliver is a unique force in professional basketball — she’s the only active WNBA player to also serve as an NBA assistant coach. Toliver, a Sparks guard, is a three-time All-Star and two-time WNBA champion. She joined Dallas this past offseason to work on Jason Kidd’s staff after two seasons in Washington.

“When you look at what Kristi brings, being a player still playing, it’s incredible,” Kidd said. “She has a different view as a player today. Also, she’s coached with the Wizards, so she’s had experience. She came highly recommended throughout the league, when you talk about players in Washington who spoke very highly of her. Once we committed to her, I got to watch her play a little bit (before she got hurt). Just talking to her I felt she would bring a lot of value to our staff.”

Toliver took some time to discuss her unique duality as a player and coach as part of The Athletic’s 40 under 40 series. You can read the full interview here.

You have this mantle now as being the only active WNBA player who’s also an NBA assistant, and I was wondering what if anything that means to you about being able to wear both hats at once as you’re progressing early into your coaching career while you’re still playing?

I’m super lucky to have this opportunity. For the Wizards to give me that opportunity first. It just goes to how women’s basketball players are, I think, and we were used to wearing multiple hats. We play year-round, in the W and overseas. We stay busy and we stay on the grind. So for me, this is nothing different. It’s a different grind. And I love it. I love being in the NBA. I obviously love the fact that I’m still playing and playing well. It’s obviously a very unique situation and experience in the first place, but certainly, I hope that it won’t be the last and then other players that want to coach on this level will have that opportunity and maybe they’ll still be playing at the same time.

Dwyane Wade, 40, Jazz minority owner/Turner Sports broadcaster

Wade is the rare NBA player who transitioned into ownership, and he did it in just two years after retiring from a Hall of Fame career. He has a friendship with Ryan Smith, who bought the majority share and serves as governor, that dates back a number of years, and Wade came to Utah to take a hands-on role behind the scenes. He has a strong relationship with star Donovan Mitchell and says he’s invested in building up the franchise and the state of Utah — Wade was part of the group, including Smith, that just bought Real Salt Lake.

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“Dwyane is not only a basketball legend, he is also a great leader, businessman and human being,” Smith said when he bought the team. “As we continue to build on the incredible legacy of the Utah Jazz franchise, we are excited to add Dwyane’s experience and expertise to the equation. Utah is an amazing place, and I couldn’t be more thrilled about the future of the franchise and the future of this state. Dwyane’s influence will be important to both.”

You can read our full profile of Wade and how he’s navigating his new role here.

Evan Wasch, 38, NBA head of basketball strategy and analytics

Wasch is responsible for a lot of things the NBA has done recently but you may know him as the NBA executive who implemented the Play-In Tournament and upended the playoff format. He also had a hand in retooling the draft lottery. Basically, if the NBA is changing its format in some way, it seems that Wasch might be behind it in some way too.

Will Weaver, 37, Rockets assistant coach

Weaver has taken a trip around the globe to become a potential NBA head coach. He was the Long Island Nets head coach, where he won G League Coach of the Year in 2019. Weaver then left for the NBL, where he coached the Sydney Kings. That gave him several years of valuable head coaching experience. He joined the Rockets staff in 2020, but only after he was reportedly a finalist for the Thunder job.

Bobby Webster, 37, Raptors general manager

Toronto has had a lot of success over the last decade and Webster has been a key part in building those teams. He was named the general manager in 2017, at just 32, two years before the Raptors won the NBA title, and has been at Masai Ujiri’s side for nine years after coming over the league office. With Ujiri now the Raptors vice chairman and president, Webster runs the day-to-day in Toronto.

“I think everyone knows what Bobby brings to our organization: intelligence, poise and creativity,” Ujiri said last year when Webster signed a multi-year extension.

Omar Wilkes, 37, Klutch Sports head of basketball

Wilkes has amassed a strong group of clients and influence around the league. He jumped from Octagon to Klutch in 2020 to be at the top of its basketball division as the agency continued its growth. The son of Hall of Famer Jamaal Wilkes, he represents Hawks star Trae Young and Timberwolves up-and-comer, Anthony Edwards.

“He’s not a father figure to him, but he’s a friend and someone who probably has had conversations with him that Trae may not want to have with me.” Rayford Young, Trae’s father, said. “You always have to have that kind of guy in your corner who you can trust, build with and he’s going to fight for you tooth and nail.”

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Oliver Winterbone, 39, Wasserman director of coaches and executives

Winterbone made the transition into representation in 2019 after five years in the Thunder front office, including as its director of player development. Wasserman hired him in 2019 as part of its effort to jumpstart its coaches and executives division. He now represents two head coaches — Billy Donovan and Daigneault — and a general manager, along with assistants and other front-office executives, a client base he’s built up in less than three years on the job.

“Oliver’s career experiences give him a rare skillset for an agent, allowing him to represent both coaches and front office executives with expertise,” Jason Ranne, COO and EVP of Wasserman’s sports talent division, said. “He has coached, worked in basketball operations, scouted, recruited and negotiated, at both the college and NBA level. We are thrilled for him to be acknowledged in this manner and know that the future is bright for both him and his clients.”

Brian Wright, 39, Spurs general manager

Wright stepped into big shoes when he took over as the Spurs GM in 2019 as RC Buford moved into a CEO role at the team’s parent company. In his sixth season in San Antonio, Wright is now the one helping move the franchise into its next phase, working alongside legendary coach and team president Gregg Popovich, helping it transition with a young roster and several lottery picks. Wright took some time to discuss how he ascended to his role and what’s next as part of The Athletic’s 40 under 40 series. You can read the full interview here.

You were named GM at 36. Now that you’re in your third season on the job how have you evolved as a general manager?

Obviously, it was unique times for that to happen. Midway through that first season with the introduction of a pandemic, it drastically changed the nature of the job. So you have to learn on the fly really quick, not just how to make transactions or how to try to bring a group together and how you want to scout and how you do all of those things, but how do you keep people safe in a time where nobody really knows what exactly is going on? I think in the broadest context it’s just been maturity, just on a holistic level and less specialized on the day-to-day. But thinking big picture. And obviously had great leadership here with Pop and RC that helped us do that.

(Top photo by Michael Gonzales/NBAE via Getty Images)

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