Longest-Tenured NBA GMs/Presidents

NBA teams don’t replace their top front office decision-makers as often as they swap out their head coaches, but there’s still been plenty of turnover amongst the the league’s top executives over the past couple years. Since we last checked in on the longest-tenured heads of basketball operations two years ago, we’ve seen 11 different changes among the NBA’s 30 teams.

Although only one person holds a team’s head coaching job, that same club might carry a variety of front office executives with titles like general manager, president of basketball operations, or executive VP of basketball operations. In some cases, it’s not always which clear which executive should be considered the club’s head of basketball operations, or which one has the ultimate final say on roster decisions. That distinction becomes even more nebulous when taking into account team ownership.

For our list of the longest-tenured GMs/presidents in the NBA, we’ve done our best to identify the top exec in each front office, but if a situation isn’t entirely clear-cut, we’ve made a note below.

Here’s the list of the NBA’s longest-tenured heads of basketball operations, along with their respective titles and the dates they were hired or promoted:

1. Pat Riley, Heat (president): September 2, 1995