As far as honors go, it’s hard to do better than being selected to the All-NBA First Team. Sure, the MVP may be the crowning individual achievement that a player can receive but being named to the First Team is it’s own kind of special reward, an acknowledgement that a player is at the top of their profession at their position.
At the very least, it’s a better gauge of quality than All-Star voting.
Today, the NBA announced this season’s First Team. There aren’t many surprises on the list:
2013-14 All-NBA First Team: @KingJames, @CP3, @KDTrey5, @JoakimNoah & @JHarden13! pic.twitter.com/RGvBOdVmNk
— NBA (@NBA) June 4, 2014
As for a notable missing name, Kobe Bryant was left off the All-NBA First Team for the first time since the 2004-05 season but it’s not shocking that he wasn’t selected given that Kobe spent most of the season injured (which still didn’t stop him from getting a ton of All-Star votes this year).
LeBron James and Kevin Durant may as well have their names etched on this list for the foreseeable future as both are destined to go down as two of the best to ever play the game. Joakim Noah is coming off a season where he justifiably won the Defensive Player of the Year and was basically the reason that Chicago’s offense functioned at all. State Farm’s Chris Paul is the best pure point guard that the game has to offer and he gets it done on both sides of the floor. James Harden may be one of the most maddening players to watch for multiple reasons, some of which are excusable (forcing drives to the hoop to draw fouls) and some which are not (his defensive effort can sometimes look like a parody of a guy trying not to care) but Harden produced as efficiently as ever at a position which is pretty weak right now.
If this were All-Star voting, Kobe would have probably made it over Harden (seriously, All-Star voting is a joke).
