Celtics front office ranked second in NBA - celticswire.usatoday

[JB]

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Boston Celtics front office ranked second in NBA

Justin Quinn

Celtics Wire

Dec. 10, 2025, 1:12 p.m. ET

The Boston Celtics have made having a capable a front office a key tool in stacking their NBA-record 18 titles. And from the looks of things, that trend seems to be very alive based on the replies of respondents to The Athletic's annual NBA front-office rankings, conducted via polling 36 executives ("presidents, general managers, VPs and assistant GMs" per the Athletic), which has the Celtics' front office ranked nearly as high as is possible, coming in at No. 2 overall.

They trail the front office of the Oklahoma City Thunder, and given they are the reigning champs and looking like they are likely to repeat, it is not hard to understand why. Boston's front office is ranked just ahead of the Houston Rockets, who are nearly as scary of a team as the Thunder, and enjoying considerable success in the wild Western Conference with a future nearly as bright.

That is some rarified air, but the Celtics' execs have earned such an assessment. "Mike Zarren is an extremely bright guy," said one opposing exec, and the tandem of he and Boston President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens has navigated the tricky waters of the second apron era while retooling the Celtics on the fly to great success.

"They have always done a good job with building their team," said another voter in the front office poll. "They made a difficult decision this offseason, but because of the rules, it was one they had to make."

"The timing was right with the Tatum injury. I would expect them to be able to turn it around pretty quickly. This year is just a reset for them. I would not expect it to be a long-term thing."

[Jack Jemsek]

Hard to be first when OKC has assembled the team and future picks they have . . . there's OKC.  A large gap.  Then Boston.  then a smaller gap followed by some better than average organizations like Houston and San Antonio.

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[Vinny Natale]

I 100% disagree with the assessment for them.

It helped a lot that they went 22-50 in 2021 and 24-58 in 2022 and 40-42 in 2023.

You cannot compare teams like that with that amount of failure and all the draft picks it brings with a team that has been extremely competitive all those years and not getting any high end draft picks.

[Timothy Savage]

True, but you have to give OKC props for the way they handled the rebuild, both in accumulating such a large number of picks and making the proper choices with them. Also their best player wasn't a draft pick but a guy they acquired in a trade. The fact they got SGA AND 5 first round picks in the same trade is just astounding.

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