2015 NBA Regular Season Awards- All of the Usual Suspects & a Few New and Improved Awards

Come for the MVP, Stay for the All-NBA 30th Team and the Tim Duncan All Stars

All 1230 regular season games are in the books. Kobe and Steph sent us out with a bang, and the playoffs are set. It’s time to pause for a few minutes and look back on the regular season. We’ll handle all the usual awards plus some fun bonus awards too. Let’s get to it. There will be Warriors.

MVP

1. Steph Curry
2. Kawhi Leonard
3. Draymond Green
4. Lebron James
5. Chris Paul
6. Kevin Durant
7. Russell Westbrook
8. James Harden

Steph should be unanimous to the point that it’s not even worth discussing, but Draymond has played a huge part in the team success too. He has the best season +/- of any player ever at +1070. He’s the focal point of the defense AND the piece that unlocks the Warriors offense as more than just Steph shooting 30 footers. Draymond has been so good and so valuable to a 73-win team that I honestly wouldn’t mind Steph and Dray being co-MVPs.

Kawhi has been absurdly good on both ends and brought it all season. No fault to Lebron saving his best for June, but it costs him a bit here. CP3 held the Clips together on and off the court yet again.KD and Russ slide because the West was terrible and OKC would likely be in the playoffs even without one of them. Harden’s numbers have been great- we’ll get back to him.

Defensive Player of the Year

1. Draymond
2. Kawhi
3. Avery Bradley

Kawhi is the best individual defender in the league by far and the leader of the best statistical defense of all time. He’s absolutely a worthy winner. But Dray is the more versatile defender and is asked to do more in his role for the Warriors. Being able to switch, guard the pick and roll, and beef up inside are all a premium in today’s NBA. Kawhi has a bit less work to do on the wing and struggled with some individual match-ups this year. Draymond just did a bit more. Avery Bradley gets third place because he came closest to anyone on the planet at stopping Curry, and that matters.

Coach of the Year

1. Steve Kerr, Luke Walton, and the entire Warriors staff
2. Greg Popovich
3. Steve Clifford
4. Dave Joerger
5. Terry Stotts

Coach of the year is not an award for one person- it’s a recognition for an entire staff. With that in mind, this is a no brainer. The Warriors won the most games ever, and that’s enough for the award every time. Pop is an easy #2.

So who else did the most with the least? Clifford’s Hornets have quietly had the third best record since All Star break. They play smart ball, and modernized the offense overnight with a barrage of threes. Joerger patched together a M*A*S*H unit of guys and made the playoffs anyway. Stotts was great but had more to work with than the guys above.

Brad Stevens, Mike Budenholzer, and Rick Carlisle deserve recognition too. Even that list has apologies. We are in a golden age of coaching- if your team doesn’t have one of these guys, you are at a serious disadvantage.

6th Man of the Year

1. Andre Iguodala
2. Patrick Patterson
3. Enes Kanter
4. Dennis Schröder
5. Tristan Thompson

Iggy is the third most important player on the best regular season team ever. His missed 18 games hurt his cause a bit- but also prove his value. The Ws were at a 64-win pace without his versatility, defense, and leadership. With Iggy healthy they went 59–5, a 76 win pace.

Patterson averages 7 and 4 but is on the court in pretty much every top Toronto lineup. He changes both ends of the court for the Raps. Kanter has the best +/- of any OKC player and abuses opponent’s benches, averaging 22/14 over 36 minutes. He has finally solved the OKC depth issue that’s plagued them for years. Thompson has been terrific and the key to Cleveland’s best lineups, further highlighting the Kevin Love problem.

Most Improved Player

1. Steph Curry
2. CJ McCollum
3. Giannis Antetokounmpo

What an absurdly silly award. Any player that isn’t improving each year is either old or not very good- basically you improve or you’re out of the league.

Curry took 240 more threes this year, usually difficult ones, and increased his 3P%. He bettered his true shooting to 67%, top 15 all-time. And his offensive +/- rating went up from equaling MJ’s best ever to 30% better than that. Steph went from clear MVP to best offensive season ever. That’s improvement.

The real winner is CJ McCollum. He became a genuine star and gave the Blazers the best non-Ws backcourt in the league. He improved his scoring, free throw rate, shooting %s, and assist rate. The transformation of Antetokounmpo into Point Giannis is a worthy third. Players like Kawhi and Draymond could also win this under the same premise as Curry.

Rookie of the Year

1. Karl-Anthony Towns
2. ikola Jokic
3. Kristaps Porzingis
4. Devin Booker
5. Boban Marjanovic

This should be as unanimous as MVP. KAT has been absurdly good for a 20-year-old and, while most rookies tire down the stretch, actually improved his numbers and led the Wolves to several upsets. You can count on one hand the number of guys you’d choose over KAT if starting a new franchise today. You might be able to count on one finger. He is real, and he is spectacular.

Jokic was terrific in Denver even if you didn’t watch. His numbers project to 17/12/4 over 36 minutes and he was great on both ends. Porzingis breathed life into a dead New York franchise- though he slowed a lot down the stretch. Booker might already be a top 10 shooting guard. League Pass favorite Boban only played 500 minutes but was ungodly during them with a 130 offensive rating to just 96 defensively. It’s either baffling or terrifying that Pop hasn’t found a way to use him more- yet.

Sophomore of the Year

1. Andrew Wiggins
2. Rodney Hood
3. Elfrid Payton
4. Jordan Clarkson
5. Zach LaVine

Too often we watch the rookies but forget the sophomores, when guys have adjusted to the wear and tear and really start to figure things out. Unfortunately this sophomore class was pretty weak. Embiid and Exum still haven’t played and guys like Jabari and Mirotic stalled out on improvements.

Wiggins remains #1. He looks like a future star 10 minutes of every game but like Rudy Gay the rest of the time. He’s still a turnstile on defense, and he needs to figure out how to do more than just score. But he’s terrific at scoring, 21ppg at age 20 most of the year with a great free throw rate and an unstoppable spin move. He looks like DeMar DeRozan at worst. Maybe a new coach can help him learn how to shoot or pass or rebound or play defense.

Rodney Hood got really good by season’s end. He’s one of those guy’s America would’ve discovered with a couple fun playoff games. Payton and Clarkson had the difficult jobs of playing point guard for terrible teams and did a very respectable job of it. LaVine is coming. He averaged 17ppg as a starting shooting guard in the second half and shot 44% from downtown. He’s your early favorite for 2017 MIP and I still contend that he’ll end up the Timberwolves’ second best player ahead of Wiggins.

All-NBA Teams

1st team- Steph, Russ, Kawhi, Lebron, Draymond

2nd team- CP3, Harden, Durant, Paul Millsap, DeAndre Jordan

3rd team- Lowry, Dame, Paul George, LaMarcus Aldridge, Boogie Cousins

MVP is about value to a team, while this is just rewarding great players with great numbers for the year. That’s why Russ moves ahead of CP3 onto the first team- 18 triple doubles speaks for itself.

And that’s why we need to talk about James Harden. He averaged 29 points, 7.5 assists, and 6 boards a game, nearly identical to Curry. Yes he was more inefficient but so was every other human. And yes he showed up overweight and alienated his teammates and coach and didn’t play much D- that’s why he’s second team instead of first. The overreaction has gone too far. Harden carried a terrible team to the playoffs. The only other players in the last three decades to hit 29/7/6 for a whole season are MJ once and Lebron twice.

All-NBA 30th Team

G- Emmanuel Mudiay, Derrick Rose

F- Kobe Bryant, Markieff Morris

C- Jahlil Okafor

If there’s a 2nd and 3rd team All NBA, there really should be a 30th too- the five worst regular starters in the league.

We’ll always remember Kobe’s final game but hopefully we can forget the previous 65- he was abysmal. He became the first player since the ’50s to take a thousand shots and shoot under 36%. For much of the year, Derrick Rose wasn’t much worse. He and Kobe are two of twenty players ever to shoot a thousand times but contribute negative win shares for the season.

Markieff was bad and gets bonus points for single-handedly ruining an otherwise fun Suns team. Mudiay and Okafor had rough rookie years. Jah was a disaster defensively and was bad even by 76ers standards. Poor Mudiay played over 2000 minutes but contributed -2.1 win shares to a bad Nuggets team- the fifth worst statistical season in the history of the NBA.

All Headed-to-the-Lottery Team

G- John Wall, Jimmy Butler

F- Giannis Antetokounmpo, Gordon Hayward

C- Anthony Davis

Just because you miss the playoffs doesn’t mean you had a bad season. Wall put up 20/10/5 and was terrific but everyone around him got hurt. Butler was at 21/5/5 and even better on defense despite heavy minutes and injuries. Hayward had 20/5/3.5 and ran the entire Jazz offense. Davis disappointed in his supposed MVP campaign but still had 24/10 despite constant injuries.

The Tim Duncan All Stars

G- Jeremy Lin, Matthew Dellavadova, JJ Barea, Kent Bazemore

F- Evan Turner, David Lee, Michael Beasley, Matt Barnes

C- Hassan Whiteside, Ian Mahinmi, Bismack Biyombo, Cole Aldrich

While Kobe Bryant was busy making $25 million this year, do you realize that Tim Duncan took only $5 million in salary? That’s tied for 155th most in the league. Duncan made the same this year as Birdman, Chris Kaman, Kyle Singler, and Jonas Jerebko. David West and Manu made similar sacrifices.

The Tim Duncan All Stars are the guys that made under $5 million and were super valuable to their team. They’re role players that played their role spectacularly- all 12 integral to upcoming playoff efforts. The starting lineup made less than $10 million combined, about the same as Portland (!) paid Anderson Varejao. The whole team made $28 million. Take away one of those bench big men and you have a team that made less than Kobe.

But won a LOT more games.

All stats and data courtesy of Basketball Reference.com.

If you like this article, please comment below and share it with your friends. Be sure to follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, humor, pop culture, and life musings.