Walk into an NBA front office in 2022, and you won't have to go far before you spot a treatise on management theory resting on a bookshelf. Concepts like organizational culture and asset management have taken hold. League executives devote a lot of thought into forming an identity for their basketball operations shops.
The NBA might still be an exceptional business in which winners and losers are decided on a literal playing field, but it has never been more like other multibillion dollar enterprises. Squint hard enough, and the cubicle farm in that NBA front office could just as easily be in Silicon Valley, if you got rid of the thundersticks and bobbleheads resting on the desks.