2018 Awards

the moops

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 19, 2016
4,700
Saint Paul, MN
Bolded are my picks for each award

Most Valuable Player

Anthony Davis, New Orleans Pelicans
James Harden, Houston Rockets
LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers


Rookie of the Year

Donovan Mitchell, Utah Jazz
Ben Simmons, Philadelphia 76ers
Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics


Sixth Man Award

Eric Gordon, Houston Rockets
Fred VanVleet, Toronto Raptors
Lou Williams, LA Clippers

Defensive Player of the Year

Anthony Davis, New Orleans Pelicans
Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers
Rudy Gobert, Utah Jazz

Most Improved Player

Clint Capela, Houston Rockets
Spencer Dinwiddie, Brooklyn Nets
Victor Oladipo, Indiana Pacers

Coach of the Year

Dwane Casey, Toronto Raptors
Quin Snyder, Utah Jazz
Brad Stevens, Boston Celtics
 

djbayko

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
25,895
Los Angeles, CA
Harden (Lebron will receive more first place votes and be closer than people expect)
Simmons (Mitchell will receive more first place votes and be a lot closer then people expect)
Casey (could possibly flip to Brad)
Gobert in a landslide
Oladipo in a landslide
Lou Williams in a landslide
 
Last edited:

Big John

New Member
Dec 9, 2016
2,086
Maybe Nate McMillan wasn't coach of the year but he should have been in the top three. The job McMillan did with an Indiana team picked to go nowhere was every bit as good as what Quinn Snyder did.
 

HowBoutDemSox

Member
SoSH Member
Aug 12, 2009
10,103
I don’t think they announced finalists for Executive of the Year, I wonder who will be in the running. Obviously, I think Ainge should be at the top of the list - the Tatum/Fultz deal, the Hayward signing, and the Kyrie/IT trade all were homeruns, despite Hayward’s injury - but I’m sure I’m missing some deserving candidates as well.
 

mauf

Anderson Cooper × Mr. Rogers
Moderator
SoSH Member
Harden, Simmons, and Williams will be runaway winners. Oladipo will win too, though Capela might make it close.

No idea what to expect on DPoY.

Coach of the Year is tough to read too. Usually the writers and the coaches agree, but with the rumors about a movement by coaches to vote for Casey to save his job, maybe that won’t be the case this time around. If Casey doesn’t get it, I think Brad gets it over Snyder.
 

OurF'ingCity

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 22, 2016
8,469
New York City
Didn't see the All-Defensive teams posted anywhere else: http://www.nba.com/article/2018/05/23/all-defensive-teams-official-release-2017-18-season

First: Covington, AD, Gobert, Jrue Holiday, Oladipo

Second: Butler, Embiid, Draymond, Average Al, Dejounte Murray

Al's first time on either team, which is cool. I get the sense he was probably the vote for "the Celtics had a really good defense but it was all team-based and I have to vote for someone."
 

nighthob

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
12,678
The Celtics official motto should be "We don't win awards, we just win the fucking games."
 

djbayko

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
25,895
Los Angeles, CA
Harden, Simmons, and Williams will be runaway winners. Oladipo will win too, though Capela might make it close.

No idea what to expect on DPoY.

Coach of the Year is tough to read too. Usually the writers and the coaches agree, but with the rumors about a movement by coaches to vote for Casey to save his job, maybe that won’t be the case this time around. If Casey doesn’t get it, I think Brad gets it over Snyder.
Simmons will win but it won't be a runaway. Mitchell grabs some first place votes and makes it closer than people expect.

Oladipo will win in a landslide.

DPoY is Gobert in a landslide.
 

mauf

Anderson Cooper × Mr. Rogers
Moderator
SoSH Member
Jimmy Butler has to be the league’s most overrated player. How can someone who watches this game for a living think he’s a top-15 player, and a top-10 defender — especially in a season where he missed 23 games?? If we’re not going to penalize guys for missing games, CP3 would clearly be a more deserving selection.

Other than that, though, the all-NBA teams are solid — I would flip-flop DeRozan and Lillard, and there’s probably someone more deserving of third-team status than PG13, but that’s nitpicking.
 

DannyDarwinism

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 7, 2007
4,883
Jimmy Butler has to be the league’s most overrated player. How can someone who watches this game for a living think he’s a top-15 player, and a top-10 defender — especially in a season where he missed 23 games?? If we’re not going to penalize guys for missing games, CP3 would clearly be a more deserving selection.

Other than that, though, the all-NBA teams are solid — I would flip-flop DeRozan and Lillard, and there’s probably someone more deserving of third-team status than PG13, but that’s nitpicking.
This is incredible.

Demar Derozan just had his best season, and yet again, his team played better when he was off the court than they did when he was on it. That is really, really rare- for an All-Star player to have a negative On-Off, yet Derozan has managed to do it in all but one of his seasons. Butler's never done it, and this season the Wolves were 13.1 points better with him on the court, while the Raptors were -2.1 with Derozan on. That's better than Derozan has been the past couple of years, but seriously, why are his teams better consistently better with him off of the court?

Even if you ignore defense*, I'm interested in hearing a case that Derozan is better than Butler. Their numbers are pretty similar.



* You should not ignore defense. Derozan is a legitimately terrible defender who just got hunted to extinction in the playoffs, where he had an incredible -18.1 On-Off. The Raptors were nearly 20 points better with him off of the court in the playoffs. Bad wing defenders really, really hurt their teams.
 

DannyDarwinism

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 7, 2007
4,883
For the record, Derozan is the only one of the 15 All-NBA players with a negative On-Off this year.

The other 14 All-NBA players have combined for 10 negative On-Off seasons out of 98 total seasons in their careers, most of those coming in their first two years. Derozan has had 8 negative On-Off seasons in his 9 years.

I honestly don't know how much to make out of it, but it's there, it's weird, and it needs to be reckoned with before I'll put Derozan on par with guys who's teams actually play better with them on the court.
 

mauf

Anderson Cooper × Mr. Rogers
Moderator
SoSH Member
This is incredible.

Demar Derozan just had his best season, and yet again, his team played better when he was off the court than they did when he was on it. That is really, really rare- for an All-Star player to have a negative On-Off, yet Derozan has managed to do it in all but one of his seasons. Butler's never done it, and this season the Wolves were 13.1 points better with him on the court, while the Raptors were -2.1 with Derozan on. That's better than Derozan has been the past couple of years, but seriously, why are his teams better consistently better with him off of the court?

Even if you ignore defense*, I'm interested in hearing a case that Derozan is better than Butler. Their numbers are pretty similar.



* You should not ignore defense. Derozan is a legitimately terrible defender who just got hunted to extinction in the playoffs, where he had an incredible -18.1 On-Off. The Raptors were nearly 20 points better with him off of the court in the playoffs. Bad wing defenders really, really hurt their teams.
These are regular-season awards. If I’m building a new franchise, there are definitely at least 15 guys I’d pick before DeRozan, but he was the best player on a 59-win team and should be recognized as such. It’s the same reason Curry only made third-team All-NBA — he’s probably the second-best player in the game, but those missed games should count against you when it comes to regular season awards.

That said, the on-off numbers are eye-opening, so I’ll retract my opinion that DeRozan should have been first-team All NBA instead of Lillard.

I’m also a little surprised by Butler’s on-off numbers. And I’m probably a bit biased against his game because I was petrified that Danny would trade the BKN pick (which netted Tatum) to Chicago for him, which I thought would be a disastrous deal for us. But I still think he shouldn’t have sniffed the all-NBA teams with all the time he missed — he’s not nearly as good as Curry (3rd team) or CP3 (snubbed), who both missed a similar number of games.
 

Philip Jeff Frye

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 23, 2001
10,230
The Celtics official motto should be "We don't win awards, we just win the fucking games."
It's pretty remarkable. The players aren't anything extraordinary but the coach didn't merit any award support either. Can someone explain how we are on the doorstep of the finals again?
 

Cesar Crespo

79
SoSH Member
Dec 22, 2002
21,588
They are like the Pistons team that beat the Lakers. No one could beat the Lakers... Bring on the Warriors.
 

DannyDarwinism

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 7, 2007
4,883
These are regular-season awards. If I’m building a new franchise, there are definitely at least 15 guys I’d pick before DeRozan, but he was the best player on a 59-win team and should be recognized as such. It’s the same reason Curry only made third-team All-NBA — he’s probably the second-best player in the game, but those missed games should count against you when it comes to regular season awards.

That said, the on-off numbers are eye-opening, so I’ll retract my opinion that DeRozan should have been first-team All NBA instead of Lillard.

I’m also a little surprised by Butler’s on-off numbers. And I’m probably a bit biased against his game because I was petrified that Danny would trade the BKN pick (which netted Tatum) to Chicago for him, which I thought would be a disastrous deal for us. But I still think he shouldn’t have sniffed the all-NBA teams with all the time he missed — he’s not nearly as good as Curry (3rd team) or CP3 (snubbed), who both missed a similar number of games.
Derozan made an impressive jump as a passer this year, but I suspect the On-Off stuff basically boils down to: the only thing he really does on offense is score, which he does in a general inefficient (though aesthetically pleasing) manner, and he's really terrible on defense. For example, advanced stats (will all due caveats) rate him as a worse defender than Cleveland Kyrie as well as a significantly worse offensive player. Those stats also rate him much worse on defensive than Harden and Lillard, who are also considered defensively challenged, but obviously bring more to the table on offense as well. He's not quite in the IT4/Lou Williams tier of bad, but he's pretty, pretty bad.

Steph should've been higher and Chris Paul should have made it. They really are two of the best PGs of all time, and both are still playing at their insanely high levels.

[
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
SoSH Member
Oct 1, 2015
24,376
So in these playoffs, the Celtics, with zero 1st, 2nd, or 3rd team all-NBA guys, have knocked out two 2nd team all-NBA players (Giannis, Embiid), and now are up 3-2 on a 1st team all-NBA player (LeBron).

Nice. :)
 

cheech13

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 5, 2006
1,608
In the week leading up to the draft last year Cavs GM David Griffin was supposedly close to deals for Paul George and/or Jimmy Butler, and Dan Gilbert fired him. Both guys made All-NBA. George Hill, Jae Crowder, Jordan Clarkson and IT... did not.
 

Ale Xander

Hamilton
SoSH Member
Oct 31, 2013
72,463
Shams Charania

✔@ShamsCharania


All-NBA teams:

First: LeBron James, James Harden, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard, Kevin Durant.

Second: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Russell Westbrook, Joel Embiid, LaMarcus Aldridge, DeMar DeRozan.

Third: Stephen Curry, Victor Oladipo, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jimmy Butler, Paul George.

2:04 PM - May 24, 2018
Generally agree with it, except for 3 surprises/disagreements

Lillard/Westbrook
Aldridge/KAT
Butler/Kyrie
 

oumbi

Member
SoSH Member
Jun 15, 2006
4,167
Interesting. How many of them are still playing in the playoffs?
 

HomeRunBaker

bet squelcher
SoSH Member
Jan 15, 2004
30,096
It's pretty remarkable. The players aren't anything extraordinary but the coach didn't merit any award support either. Can someone explain how we are on the doorstep of the finals again?
I disagree that our players haven't been extraordinary. For all the "incredibly unexpected playoff run" talk as if the Celtics are the NBA's version of Hickory High nobody is recognizing how extraordinary these players have been all season and in these playoffs.

This isn't a bunch of crappy players miraculously winning games.......we're led by an All-Star FA signing, two Top-3 lottery picks and a PG who had been making steady leaps since he entered the league even without Kyrie and Hayward. I'm sure if Smart didn't miss so much time with his injury he'd have made an All-Defense Team......I feel he should have anyway. We are a much more talented team overall than the Cavaliers despite not having the best player in the series.
 

Philip Jeff Frye

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 23, 2001
10,230
I disagree that our players haven't been extraordinary. For all the "incredibly unexpected playoff run" talk as if the Celtics are the NBA's version of Hickory High nobody is recognizing how extraordinary these players have been all season and in these playoffs.
I'm not saying our players aren't good, it's the voters for these awards that are. I totally agree with you.