jestersmash
01-28-2011, 06:14 PM
Hollinger picks who he feels deserved to be all star starters this year.
Points. Wings. Bigs.
It's how every team delineates its roster these days, and that's been the case for at least a decade, if not longer.
Or rather, every team except one: the All-Star team. For that one, we still use the outdated guards-forwards-centers system, and the result, as one might expect, has made the whole enterprise way more difficult than it needs to be.
This year's Western Conference roster is a good example. The West is littered with quality big men, to the point that several All-Star caliber bigs won't make the team. The irony, however, is that because nearly all those bigs are listed as "forwards," either because they play power forward slightly more than center, or because we have to pretend so a player isn't offended (coughDuncancough). It's so crowded there that Paul Millsap couldn't even get on the ballot, for crying out loud.
As a result, the best player listed on the West ballot at center this year is probably Denver's Nene, an underrated player who is having a fine season but nonetheless would make nobody's list of the dozen best players in the conference. He won't make the team, of course, because a billion Chinese people haven't been told of Yao Ming's injury yet, but were it not for this, we would have a horribly undeserving starter (most likely L.A.'s Andrew Bynum) patrolling the middle for the West.
Meanwhile, the ballot selectors are left to make a distinction that's largely irrelevant in real life. Is Pau Gasol a center or a forward? Tim Duncan? Blake Griffin? Dirk Nowitzki? LaMarcus Aldridge? In truth, all these players are "bigs" and guard each other on and off throughout the game when they play each other. But instead of lumping them all together, we split them into "forwards" and "centers", and have the former group competing on the ballot with players like Paul Pierce and Kevin Durant even though they never check each other back in the real world.
Obviously, this is ridiculous, and the only reason it hasn't changed is the same This Is How We've Always Done It logic that blocks change of almost any kind until enough people stand up and point out just how stupid it is.
So let's do things differently this year. Instead of picking my team from the actual ballot, I'm going to submit my picks for each side's starting five in points-wings-bigs style. (The real vote will be announced Thursday night). And yes, we'll get to my picks for the subs in another day or two here. But first, here are the 10 guys I'd like to see on the floor at tipoff:
WEST
Point guard: Chris Paul, New Orleans. This is the toughest position to pick in the whole league. Picking Paul means I did not pick Russell Westbrook, who averages 22 and 8 and ranks seventh in the league in PER, or Steve Nash, who is pushing for a career high in PER at age 36 despite the organizational tomfoolery that's denuded his team's roster, or Deron Williams, who has done the same with a stripped-down Utah squad.
Nonetheless, CP still has the conch, knee brace and all. (He told me he can't wait to get the thing off, by the way, but the trainers are telling him to keep wearing it.) Paul isn't always taking over late in games the way one might like, but his staggering efficiency at the offensive end combined with his ball-hawking D make him the game's best.
Paul is quietly one of the game's most improved shooters, nailing 47.1 percent of his 3s and retaining an outside chance at joining the hallowed 50-40-90 club, while leading the league in steals and ranking third in assists. He's second in the NBA in PER, too, which surprises many people, but it's because he virtually never makes negative plays -- his phenomenally low turnover rate goes underappreciated and his true shooting percent is third among point guards. And as Hornets GM Dell Demps pointed out to me recently, virtually all Paul's defensive thievery comes while he's still in front of his man -- he almost never takes himself out of plays with bad gambles.
Wing: Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers. Though he takes periodic criticism for shooting too much -- Kobe's usage rate is his highest since his me-on-five season in 2005-06 -- Bryant's true shooting percentage is slightly up from last season and well within his career norms. And believe it or not, his assist ratio is virtually identical to the past several seasons, as well.
The big story with Bryant, however, is that L.A. is managing his minutes to keep him closer to peak efficiency through the regular season. After watching him crash and burn in the second half of last season (before recovering dramatically in the playoffs), Bryant is down to 33 minutes a game, but has played in all 46 contests and ranks fifth in the NBA in PER.
Wing: Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City. Picking Kobe as the first wing was easy. Splitting hairs between Manu Ginobili and Durant for the second spot was much more difficult. Durant has a higher efficiency mark and leads the league in scoring, even though his shooting numbers are a bit down from the past two seasons. Ginobili, meanwhile, has been the best player on the league's best team.
Ginobili has been the better defender thus far, but Durant also has a big advantage in minutes, one that I think is relevant in this case since it's hard to imagine Manu keeping up this output while playing 40 minutes every night. It feels a little odd to leave a 38-7 team with no starters, but denying Durant is equally inexplicable.
Big: Pau Gasol, L.A. Lakers. Filling the first Western Conference frontcourt spot is relatively easy. Despite a dip in production in December, Gasol's overall body of work easily trumps that of any Western Conference big man. Only Minnesota's Kevin Love can match him in estimated wins added (EWA), and Gasol vastly outpaces Love in defensive impact and team success. Additionally, the Spaniard's versatility in moving seamlessly between power forward and center is what makes the Lakers' frontcourt rotation work so well, while his unselfishness and, shall we say, political acumen prevent what might otherwise have been an alpha-dog battle between him and Kobe.
Finally, Gasol's durability has been critical during Andrew Bynum's early-season absence. The Lakers don't run very deep in the frontcourt, so having Gasol available for all 46 games at 37 minutes per night has been crucial, even though his numbers took a hit during a weary-looking stretch in December.
Big: Dirk Nowitzki, Mavs. You can argue for several other players here, all of whom out-EWA Nowitzki because of the 12 games he missed due to injury. When on the court, however, it's pretty clear that Dirk is still a better player than those cats, as he ranks eighth in the NBA in PER and the Dallas offense pretty much cratered in his absence.
On a Dallas roster that puts the irony in "Lone Star State," Nowitzki's outsized offensive role is a key reason the Mavs were second in the West before his injury, while his quietly effective defense -- especially his length in Dallas' oft-used zones -- doesn't get nearly enough credit due to our lingering (and outdated) Eurosoftie stereotype.
EAST
In a historic first, I agree with every starting pick by the fans in the East. In most cases, the decision is so obvious that there isn't a whole lot to discuss, although the Dwight Howard-Timofey Mozgov debate at center is likely to rage all winter. Here's my quintet:
Point guard: Derrick Rose, Chicago. Any potential debate between Rose and Boston'sRajon Rondo for this slot pretty much went out the window when Rondo sat out a dozen games with an injury, but even if Rondo had remained on the court, he faced an uphill battle. Rose is arguably the league's most improved player, coming back from the summer with a much more potent jump shot and, in a development that has garnered much less attention, making even greater strides at the defensive end.
As a result, he has inserted himself into the MVP race (and, I would argue, the MIP race) as the go-to guy on a team that's 31-14, despite playing virtually the whole season with at least one of its two frontcourt anchors out of the lineup.
Wing: LeBron James, Miami. Probably the least controversial pick on the roster. Fans don't like him because of "The Decision," but there is no valid basketball reason for leaving James off the East's starting five. He leads the NBA in PER and EWA, and his Heat team is cruising toward a high-50s win total despite basically having nine replacement-level players surrounding the three stars. Nonetheless, the greatest demonstration of his value can be shown by watching any Cleveland game, and remembering that James put together back-to-back 60-win seasons with virtually the same cast.
Wing: Dwyane Wade, Miami. Not a bad second option, eh? Wade's résumé speaks for itself, as he ranks third in the league in both PER and EWA after placing second in each category last season. While his scoring and assist numbers are both down while he takes on a different role next to LeBron James, Wade has offset some of that decline by ramping up his rebounding to an impressive 6.5 a game and terrorizing opponents as a defensive stopper on a surprisingly outstanding Miami defense.
Big: Amare Stoudemire, New York. I guess it wasn't just Steve Nash, after all. As many have noted, Stoudemire has brought the magic back to the World's Most Overrated Arena, and while that's an inane reason to give somebody an MVP award -- seriously, are we having this discussion if he did the exact same thing in Indiana? -- it does show that he was starved of credit when he had nearly identical success in Phoenix.
Stoudemire has done two things as a 'Bocker that stand out in particular. First, his greater attention to defense has him swatting 2.3 shots a game -- more than double his average in Phoenix the past two seasons -- and competently manning the center spot as a slightly undersized 5. Second, he's actually passing once in a while, with his 2.7 assists cruising for a career high. Overall he's 11th in PER, 12th in EWA and second in scoring average.
Big: Dwight Howard, Orlando. The league's unquestioned No. 1 center further cemented his case as the best by developing a midrange bank shot from the post and adding further refinement to some of his other moves on the block. Now maybe he can start banking his free throws, too.
Despite his free throw frailty, Howard is so dominant in other respects that he's an easy call here. He's second in rebounding and fifth in blocks, and is likely to win a third straight Defensive Player of the Year trophy at the end of the season. Throw in 57.1 percent shooting and 22.1 points, and he's the league's gold standard at center 'til further notice.
Points. Wings. Bigs.
It's how every team delineates its roster these days, and that's been the case for at least a decade, if not longer.
Or rather, every team except one: the All-Star team. For that one, we still use the outdated guards-forwards-centers system, and the result, as one might expect, has made the whole enterprise way more difficult than it needs to be.
This year's Western Conference roster is a good example. The West is littered with quality big men, to the point that several All-Star caliber bigs won't make the team. The irony, however, is that because nearly all those bigs are listed as "forwards," either because they play power forward slightly more than center, or because we have to pretend so a player isn't offended (coughDuncancough). It's so crowded there that Paul Millsap couldn't even get on the ballot, for crying out loud.
As a result, the best player listed on the West ballot at center this year is probably Denver's Nene, an underrated player who is having a fine season but nonetheless would make nobody's list of the dozen best players in the conference. He won't make the team, of course, because a billion Chinese people haven't been told of Yao Ming's injury yet, but were it not for this, we would have a horribly undeserving starter (most likely L.A.'s Andrew Bynum) patrolling the middle for the West.
Meanwhile, the ballot selectors are left to make a distinction that's largely irrelevant in real life. Is Pau Gasol a center or a forward? Tim Duncan? Blake Griffin? Dirk Nowitzki? LaMarcus Aldridge? In truth, all these players are "bigs" and guard each other on and off throughout the game when they play each other. But instead of lumping them all together, we split them into "forwards" and "centers", and have the former group competing on the ballot with players like Paul Pierce and Kevin Durant even though they never check each other back in the real world.
Obviously, this is ridiculous, and the only reason it hasn't changed is the same This Is How We've Always Done It logic that blocks change of almost any kind until enough people stand up and point out just how stupid it is.
So let's do things differently this year. Instead of picking my team from the actual ballot, I'm going to submit my picks for each side's starting five in points-wings-bigs style. (The real vote will be announced Thursday night). And yes, we'll get to my picks for the subs in another day or two here. But first, here are the 10 guys I'd like to see on the floor at tipoff:
WEST
Point guard: Chris Paul, New Orleans. This is the toughest position to pick in the whole league. Picking Paul means I did not pick Russell Westbrook, who averages 22 and 8 and ranks seventh in the league in PER, or Steve Nash, who is pushing for a career high in PER at age 36 despite the organizational tomfoolery that's denuded his team's roster, or Deron Williams, who has done the same with a stripped-down Utah squad.
Nonetheless, CP still has the conch, knee brace and all. (He told me he can't wait to get the thing off, by the way, but the trainers are telling him to keep wearing it.) Paul isn't always taking over late in games the way one might like, but his staggering efficiency at the offensive end combined with his ball-hawking D make him the game's best.
Paul is quietly one of the game's most improved shooters, nailing 47.1 percent of his 3s and retaining an outside chance at joining the hallowed 50-40-90 club, while leading the league in steals and ranking third in assists. He's second in the NBA in PER, too, which surprises many people, but it's because he virtually never makes negative plays -- his phenomenally low turnover rate goes underappreciated and his true shooting percent is third among point guards. And as Hornets GM Dell Demps pointed out to me recently, virtually all Paul's defensive thievery comes while he's still in front of his man -- he almost never takes himself out of plays with bad gambles.
Wing: Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers. Though he takes periodic criticism for shooting too much -- Kobe's usage rate is his highest since his me-on-five season in 2005-06 -- Bryant's true shooting percentage is slightly up from last season and well within his career norms. And believe it or not, his assist ratio is virtually identical to the past several seasons, as well.
The big story with Bryant, however, is that L.A. is managing his minutes to keep him closer to peak efficiency through the regular season. After watching him crash and burn in the second half of last season (before recovering dramatically in the playoffs), Bryant is down to 33 minutes a game, but has played in all 46 contests and ranks fifth in the NBA in PER.
Wing: Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City. Picking Kobe as the first wing was easy. Splitting hairs between Manu Ginobili and Durant for the second spot was much more difficult. Durant has a higher efficiency mark and leads the league in scoring, even though his shooting numbers are a bit down from the past two seasons. Ginobili, meanwhile, has been the best player on the league's best team.
Ginobili has been the better defender thus far, but Durant also has a big advantage in minutes, one that I think is relevant in this case since it's hard to imagine Manu keeping up this output while playing 40 minutes every night. It feels a little odd to leave a 38-7 team with no starters, but denying Durant is equally inexplicable.
Big: Pau Gasol, L.A. Lakers. Filling the first Western Conference frontcourt spot is relatively easy. Despite a dip in production in December, Gasol's overall body of work easily trumps that of any Western Conference big man. Only Minnesota's Kevin Love can match him in estimated wins added (EWA), and Gasol vastly outpaces Love in defensive impact and team success. Additionally, the Spaniard's versatility in moving seamlessly between power forward and center is what makes the Lakers' frontcourt rotation work so well, while his unselfishness and, shall we say, political acumen prevent what might otherwise have been an alpha-dog battle between him and Kobe.
Finally, Gasol's durability has been critical during Andrew Bynum's early-season absence. The Lakers don't run very deep in the frontcourt, so having Gasol available for all 46 games at 37 minutes per night has been crucial, even though his numbers took a hit during a weary-looking stretch in December.
Big: Dirk Nowitzki, Mavs. You can argue for several other players here, all of whom out-EWA Nowitzki because of the 12 games he missed due to injury. When on the court, however, it's pretty clear that Dirk is still a better player than those cats, as he ranks eighth in the NBA in PER and the Dallas offense pretty much cratered in his absence.
On a Dallas roster that puts the irony in "Lone Star State," Nowitzki's outsized offensive role is a key reason the Mavs were second in the West before his injury, while his quietly effective defense -- especially his length in Dallas' oft-used zones -- doesn't get nearly enough credit due to our lingering (and outdated) Eurosoftie stereotype.
EAST
In a historic first, I agree with every starting pick by the fans in the East. In most cases, the decision is so obvious that there isn't a whole lot to discuss, although the Dwight Howard-Timofey Mozgov debate at center is likely to rage all winter. Here's my quintet:
Point guard: Derrick Rose, Chicago. Any potential debate between Rose and Boston'sRajon Rondo for this slot pretty much went out the window when Rondo sat out a dozen games with an injury, but even if Rondo had remained on the court, he faced an uphill battle. Rose is arguably the league's most improved player, coming back from the summer with a much more potent jump shot and, in a development that has garnered much less attention, making even greater strides at the defensive end.
As a result, he has inserted himself into the MVP race (and, I would argue, the MIP race) as the go-to guy on a team that's 31-14, despite playing virtually the whole season with at least one of its two frontcourt anchors out of the lineup.
Wing: LeBron James, Miami. Probably the least controversial pick on the roster. Fans don't like him because of "The Decision," but there is no valid basketball reason for leaving James off the East's starting five. He leads the NBA in PER and EWA, and his Heat team is cruising toward a high-50s win total despite basically having nine replacement-level players surrounding the three stars. Nonetheless, the greatest demonstration of his value can be shown by watching any Cleveland game, and remembering that James put together back-to-back 60-win seasons with virtually the same cast.
Wing: Dwyane Wade, Miami. Not a bad second option, eh? Wade's résumé speaks for itself, as he ranks third in the league in both PER and EWA after placing second in each category last season. While his scoring and assist numbers are both down while he takes on a different role next to LeBron James, Wade has offset some of that decline by ramping up his rebounding to an impressive 6.5 a game and terrorizing opponents as a defensive stopper on a surprisingly outstanding Miami defense.
Big: Amare Stoudemire, New York. I guess it wasn't just Steve Nash, after all. As many have noted, Stoudemire has brought the magic back to the World's Most Overrated Arena, and while that's an inane reason to give somebody an MVP award -- seriously, are we having this discussion if he did the exact same thing in Indiana? -- it does show that he was starved of credit when he had nearly identical success in Phoenix.
Stoudemire has done two things as a 'Bocker that stand out in particular. First, his greater attention to defense has him swatting 2.3 shots a game -- more than double his average in Phoenix the past two seasons -- and competently manning the center spot as a slightly undersized 5. Second, he's actually passing once in a while, with his 2.7 assists cruising for a career high. Overall he's 11th in PER, 12th in EWA and second in scoring average.
Big: Dwight Howard, Orlando. The league's unquestioned No. 1 center further cemented his case as the best by developing a midrange bank shot from the post and adding further refinement to some of his other moves on the block. Now maybe he can start banking his free throws, too.
Despite his free throw frailty, Howard is so dominant in other respects that he's an easy call here. He's second in rebounding and fifth in blocks, and is likely to win a third straight Defensive Player of the Year trophy at the end of the season. Throw in 57.1 percent shooting and 22.1 points, and he's the league's gold standard at center 'til further notice.