Wondering which NBA General Manager has proven himself to be popular during the offseason so far? Check out our report of the most loved NBA GMs during draft season and free agency.

With the 2024-25 NBA season in the books, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a quiet time in the league’s calendar.

However, less than a month after the Oklahoma City Thunder edged out the Indiana Pacers in a thrilling seven game series, the league has gone through the draft, free agency and has seen some blockbuster trades.

With this in mind, the team here at Betway wanted to find out which NBA General Managers have proven to be the most popular with their fans during the offseason activity so far.

Using a social listening tool to analyse online posts since June 23rd, the data found that the Indiana Pacers’ Chad Buchanan had the most positive sentiment towards him at whopping 91%.

While the Pacers may have come up just short last season, the positive sentiment for Buchanan in Indiana suggests that Pacers fans have been delighted with the roster Buchanan has constructed, and they have faith he can build a roster which can go one step further next year.

The Atlanta Hawks already had exciting players such as Trae Young and Zacharie Risacher. However, adding other quality players to their roster in Kristaps Porziņģis, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Luke Kennard means it shouldn’t really be a surprise that Onsi Saleh is the second most loved GM in the league at the moment.

Since the end of this year’s NBA Finals, positive sentiment in Georgia towards Saleh stands at an impressive 84%.

Going into the offseason, the future of Kevin Durant was arguably the biggest storyline in basketball. The Houston Rockets managed to land KD and snag other talent such as Clint Capela and Dorian Finney-Smith, all while retaining Fred VanVleet too.

Moves such as the above are just some of the reasons why many are saying the Rockets are winning the offseason so far, and they also explain why GM Rafael Stone’s positive sentiment from Rockets fans is at a huge 82%.

The top 15 most popular NBA front office decision makers of the offseason so far can be seen below.

There’s still plenty of time remaining in the NBA offseason though which means further blockbuster trades and moves are to be expected, meaning GMs have plenty of time to see their popularity within their fanbase either rise or fall. To see more of this content throughout the offseason, as well as the latest NBA odds, please head over to the Betway site.

Methodology

Using the social listening tool Brandwatch, we analysed online mentions of each NBA General Manager in their team’s home location. These General Managers were then ranked highest to lowest by the percentage of positive sentiment in these mentions.

Online mentions from June 23rd, 2025 – July 13th, 2025, were analysed.

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• Source: https://blog.betway.com/basketball/the-most-popular-nba-general-managers-during-free-agency/