Riley, Forman share Executive of the Year

Riley, Forman share top executive honors

Miami Heat president Pat Riley and Chicago Bulls general manager Gar Forman are co-recipients of the NBA Executive of the Year award for engineering overhauls that so far have propelled their teams to the Eastern Conference semifinals.

The league announced the award Tuesday.

Riley and Forman each received 11 of a possible 30 votes from a panel of team executives, making this the first time the award has been shared since its inception for the 1972-73 season.

Fair enough I guess, both teams had big offseasons to say the least and enjoyed great seasons to date. I wouldn't have minded if Riley had won it outright, he pulled off one of the biggest free agent coups in history and managed to add a couple of other solid pieces to the Heat as well, so he's certainly deserving. Nice to see Forman recognised as well though, I was very much down on him as well as Paxson before this past offseason but they did a great job and I'm happy to have been proven wrong.

What's weird about that is that Paxson finished third...

Voting... Bah humbug.

It's still confusing me how Forman's achievement can be seen equal to Riley's. Whoever Forman was chasing, Riley won them. Despite the Bulls having a better record, I am still not convinced that he equally deserves it. And we are talking over one of the biggest and successful move anyone has ever pulled during the offseason.

Paxman put together a complete team, rather than... you know... 3 guys. They hired an excellent coach, and the improvement in the Bulls' record far surpassed any improvement that the Heat made. It's a regular season award, like they all are. And despite the Bulls' rather lukewarm play in the playoffs so far, Gar Forman and John Paxson put together a team that had a much better season.

That's as simple as it gets.