Howard should have been on this team over others, including Dame. He was the best big man player in the league for multiple seasons. He beat a prime LeBron team to take his squad to the finals. He made his team excellent defensively covering the entire court better than DPOY Gobert, while still scoring huge numbers and doing it efficiently. He was dominant. Dame has never won a conference finals game. He's had many seasons where he can't solve a simple defensive trap in the playoffs. I think Dwight being a dick, Dame being a great guy off the floor, and Dwight losing to Dame 0.9 played a big part in this. Plus Dwight bouncing to so many teams as a basic role player. If he just retired after Houston maybe he would've made it. As a Dame and Blazer fan I'm happy he made it, but I have to admit it may not be fully deserved.
I'm not sold on Lillard being on the list, but I can see the argument. His big shot heroics have given him an outsized winner profile (outsized for someone who hasn't won any titles), he's becoming as renowned as Curry for the effortless super-deep three and the voters were surely extrapolating his career to some extent (which is up to opinion as to whether that's fair for current players--even if Lillard hasn't got the career totals of some others, his career arc certainly suggests big totals). I could go either way with Lillard, but I don't think it's a travesty that he made it.
