Just months after bouncing the OKC Thunder from the 2024 playoffs, the Dallas Mavericks fell into an absolute tailspin as a result of disastrous and highly publicized front office decision-making.
Two years removed from their NBA Finals run, they've compiled a mediocre record of 65-99 and two straight playoff-less campaigns.
Now, after wrapping up 2025-26 with the fourth-worst record in the Western Conference, it seems this fadding franchise is actively trying to claw its way back to competency, as it was announced on Monday that Dallas has officially hired Masai Ujiri as their new Team President and Alternate Governor.
Best known for his 12-year stint as the top executive for the Raptors, Ujiri consistently kept Toronto well-positioned for deep playoff runs and, through his impressive draft skills and big-swing trades, constructed the roster that led to the club's first-ever championship run in 2019.
The 2013 NBA Executive of the Year will now be heading to a Mavs team that, though it has faded to relative obscurity these past few years, boasts a solid young core led by the league's most recent number one pick and Rookie of the Year, Cooper Flagg.
Equipped with a projected top-eight pick in this year's draft, with his long-standing track record and abundance of high-value assets now in his possession, Ujiri is in a prime position to get this lavish yet somewhat lost organization back on track.
Even with Masai Ujiri hire, Thunder still have best front office in the NBA
Despite this objectively solid hire made by the Mavericks, the Thunder still stand alone in the conversation of the best front offices in the association today.
Frankly, this status of theirs goes beyond just Sam Presti, with Klutch Sports' Rich Paul perfectly describing how incredibly "layered" Oklahoma City's back-end personnel is during a December episode of Game Over with Max Kellerman and Rich Paul, saying:
"The culture, you have to have depth in the front office... meaning, the front office is layered. You have to have scouting, you have to have advanced scouting, you have your international aspect of it, you have your pro scouting, you have your college scouting. You're looking at it from a place of how are we building this team. You're managing assets, you're stockpiling draft capital and things of that nature... all while doing that, you're establishing a culture."
Further strengthening the case for the Thunder being the best front office in the game, just a few days after Paul's assessment, it was announced that Oklahoma City had literally been ranked as the league's top front office in a survey conducted by The Athletic that polled 36 anonymous NBA executives.
One voter even went so far as to say that they have already proven to be the "best-ever" at securing future assets while still managing to stay competitive in the present.
With roughly 15 first-round picks coming their way through 2031, coupled with the fact that the Thunder are legitimately in the running to take home their second-straight Larry O'Brien Trophy, it's hard to argue against such sentiment.
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