In the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

and

Women's National Basketball Association The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...

, the General Manager or GM of a team typically controls player transactions and bears the primary responsibility on behalf of the team during contract negotiations with players. The

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

is also normally the person who hires and fires the coaching staff, including the

head coach A head coach, senior coach or manager is a professional at training and developing athletes. They typically hold a more public profile and are paid more than other coaches. In some sports, the head coach is instead called the "manager", as in assoc ...

. The exact title and responsibilities held by a general manager can vary from team to team. Some teams choose to have both a general manager and a President of Basketball Operations. For example, when

Red Auerbach Arnold Jacob "Red" Auerbach (September 20, 1917 – October 28, 2006) was an American professional basketball coach and executive. He served as a head coach in the National Basketball Association (NBA), most notably with the Boston Celtics. ...

was team president of the

Boston Celtics The Boston Celtics ( ) are an American professional basketball team based in Boston. The Celtics compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division. Founded in 1946 as one of t ...

in the 1980s,

Jan Volk Jan Volk is a former basketball executive who served as the General Manager of the Boston Celtics from 1984 to 1997. Volk joined the Celtics in 1971 after graduating from Columbia Law School. His early work with the team included ticket sales dire ...

, the team's GM from 1984-1997, reported to Auerbach regarding basketball-related decisions.Managements and Captains
www.nba.com/celtics, accessed February 10, 2011. Others, such as the

Minnesota Lynx The Minnesota Lynx are an American professional basketball team based in Minneapolis, playing in the Western Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). The team won the WNBA title in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. Founded pr ...

of the WNBA, have a general manager who is also

Chief Executive Officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of the organization, effectively reporting only to the owner.Lynx front office
/ref> Still others will place player personnel decisions in the hands of a

; for example, when

Don Nelson Donald Arvid Nelson (born May 15, 1940) is an American former professional basketball player and head coach. Nelson is second all-time in regular season wins of any coach in NBA history, with 1,335 (he held the record for most wins for almost 12 ...

became coach of the

Milwaukee Bucks The Milwaukee Bucks are an American professional basketball team based in Milwaukee. The Bucks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The team was founded in 1968 ...

in 1976, he also became its general manager. In these cases, coaching staffs generally report to a different executive officer within the organization.

References

{{NBAgeneralmanagers * * *

See also

References