I was thinking about this tonight and two things dawned on me. One, Dame will probably make it with his only real competition being Curry who is hurt and DeRozen who doesn't carry the same load Dame does. If we fall to 6 seed or below and OKC rises to 3 or 4 seed, I could see Westbrook in there but that's it. Am I right. The second thing that has dawned on me is that after a spectacular season, Giannis Antetokounmpo won't. All NBA First Team has to be Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, James Harden, and Damian Lillard. While we're having fun, let's look at Second Team- Towns, Giannis, PG13 (???), Curry, Westbrook. Third Team- Embiid, Aldridge, Jokic (if they would consider him a forward in order to honor him; otherwise, Draymond), DeRozen, CP3. It's weird. There aren't many All NBA level forwards after LeBron, Durant, and Giannis. What are YOUR All NBA teams?
Curry Harden LeBron Durant Davis Westbrook Dame Antetokoumpo KAT Jokic Kyrie Oladipo Kanter Aldridge Capela Edited 3 times now--I can't make up my mind...
Curry shouldn't make it ahead of Lillard but he will. Westbrook should not be chosen ahead of Dame either, not a chance, but he will be.
I disagree. Would be very easy for Kyrie and Russ to be 2nd team ahead of Dame, especially if the Blazers drop several of the tough games in this final month.
There was a big discussion on Reddit last night about this. Most fans were actually giving it to Dame because they thought Curry has missed too many games. It was pretty awesome to see so many fans of other teams saying Dame deserved first team.
If Portland ends with the 3rd seed and 5th best overall record in the league, it better be Dame's name on the 1st Team All-NBA list.
I was looking at some comparisons of Damian and DeMar, both of which I've felt are underrated players. So I thought, if Damian shot as few three pointers as DeMar does, what would his stats look like? Well, his shooting % would go up to 46.3%, but his scoring would go down 6 points (27 vs 21). Currently, Damians effective FG% is much better than DeMars, 53% vs 49%. I am not smart enough to figure out how that would change if Damian took fewer threes. This just lead me to wonder how much better Damians #'s would be if the team had continual threats (as in, can create their own shots, and aren't inconsistent messes at times) at the PF and SF spots, and also that maybe DeMar is a little overrated?
I'm not sure what the imaginary line would be for games played. Last year it was Anthony Davis 75 games James Harden 81 games LeBron James 74 games Kawhi Leonard 74 games Russell Westbrook 81 games Curry has currently played in 50 games with 15 games remaining. So even if he returned for the very next game, he'd (at most) play in 65 games. I'm not sure who had the least number of games played and still got onto an All-NBA team. I answered my own question: http://bkref.com/tiny/jyrgy The lockouts in 98-99 and 2011-2012 kinda skews the numbers a bit, but Kobe got first team with 65 games in 2003-2004. Chris Paul got first team with 62 games in 2013-2014, Shaq did it twice with only 60 games in 97-98 and 59 games in 05-06. So it can be done.
My votes - First Team: (G) James Harden (31.0 ppg, 8.7 apg, 5.2 rpg, 52W-14L) (G) Damian Lillard (26.9 ppg, 6.5 apg, 4.5 rpg, 41W-26L) (F) Kevin Durant (26.6 ppg, 6.8 rpg, 5.3 apg, 51W-16L) (F) LeBron James (26.9 ppg, 9.0 apg, 8.4 rpg, 38W-28L) (F) Anthony Davis (28.0 ppg, 11.0 rpg, 2.3 apg, 38W-28L) Second Team: (G) DeMar DeRozan (23.7 ppg, 5.2 apg, 4.0 rpg, 49W-17L) (G) Russell Westbrook (25.2 ppg, 10.1 apg, 9.6 rpg, 40W-29L) (F) Giannis Antetokounmpo (27.1 ppg, 10.1 rpg, 4.7 apg, 36W-31L) (C) Karl-Anthony Towns (20.5 ppg, 12.2 rpg, 2.4 apg, 39W-29L) (C) Joel Embiid (23.4 ppg, 10.9 rpg, 3.2 apg, 36W-29L) Third Team: (G) Jimmy Buttler (22.2 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 5.0 apg, 39W-29L) (G) Kyrie Irving (24.4 ppg, 5.1 apg, 3.8 rpg, 46W-21L) (F) Paul George (22.0 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 3.4 apg, 40W-29L) (C) Nikola Jokic (17.2 ppg, 10.4 rpg, 6.1 apg, 37W-30L) (C) Andre Drummond (14.9 ppg, 15.8 rpg, 3.3 apg, 30W-36L) Others of note: * injured (G) Stephen Curry (26.3 ppg, 6.2 apg, 5.1 rpg, 51W-16L) injured (G) John Wall (19.4 ppg, 9.3 apg, 3.6 rpg, 38W-29L) (G) Victor Oladipo (23.8 ppg, 5.3 rpg, 4.3 apg, 39W-28L) injured (C) DeMarcus Cousins (25.2 ppg, 12.9 rpg, 5.4 apg, 38W-28L) injured (F) Kevin Love (17.9 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 1.6 apg, 38W-28L) injured (C) Kristaps Porzingis (22.7 ppg, 6.6 rpg, 1.2 apg, 24W-43L) (G) Klay Thompson (19.7 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 2.7 apg, 51W-16L) (F) Draymond Green (11.2 ppg, 7.9 rpg, 7.4 apg, 51W-16L) Kyle Lowry (16.5 ppg, 6.6 apg, 5.7 rpg, 49W-17L) * If Steph comes back and plays in the remaining games, I'd add him to the second team, bump DeMar down to third, and bump John Wall off. edited: removed John Wall due to injury.
Wait a second--John Wall's 37 games played are good enough to get him on the 3rd team, but Steph's 50 games get him left off entirely? You might want to rethink that one.
There are just so many good point guards right now. It's crazy. And Paul is currently sitting on 49 games played. His assists are at their lowest since his second season in the league (probably because of Harden). His scoring is slightly up from last year, and his rebounds are up. His numbers don't really knock your socks off though. 18.8 ppg, 8.1 assists, 5.4 rebounds.
In the golden age. And I have a sinking feeling that when Dame's career is over, he's gonna end up overlooked because of all the other generational PG talent around him. For this season, I'd rank em: 1. Steph - ~28 PER and historically efficient TS% 2. CP - yet another season with 25 PER and best defense from the position 3. Kyrie- nearly identical stats to Dame but with more wins 4. Dame- ridiculous jump from where he was in November. Efficiency going up, and elite leadership. 5. Russ- close to averaging a triple double again, and only 2 games behind us. He's inefficient as hell though. For all NBA teams: 1st: Steph-Harden-KD-Bron-Davis 2nd: CP-Kyrie-Derozan-Giannis-Towns 3rd: Dame-Westbrook-Butler-Aldridge-Embiid George, Oladipo, Jokic on the outside looking in. Took a little poetic license putting Demar as a forward. That tends to happen on these all NBA teams. I think he'd struggle making a team as a guard, but he's been incredible this year and has directly been responsible for his team being elite.
I think games played HAS to be factored in. Steph is at 50 games on the season. Paul is at 49 games on the season. Dame has played 60 games.