I always wait until the final game of the NBA season is in the books before handing in my postseason awards ballot, and the reason is twofold: If the deadline is not until Thursday afternoon, what’s the hurry? (This is how journalists work when it comes to deadlines. Most of us, anyway.) The second is because you always want to wait and see if something happens on the final night of the season to change either your ballot or your
There is a reason why I always wait until the 82nd game of the season is in the books before deciding on my postseason awards choices. Three words: What’s the hurry? This is a lesson I learned way back in 1999 when I was covering a late regular-season game at the Alamodome during the lockout-shortened 50-game season. There were still three of four games left, and I was sitting alongside a veteran reporter from USA Today and asked him which way he
2014 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Joakim Noah led all vote getters for the NBA All-Defensive First Team. The NBA released the 2014 All-Defensive teams Monday afternoon. Leading the charge was the 2014 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year and Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah, who led all vote getters. He was the only player to get triple-digit votes for the First Team, tallying 105 such votes as well as another 13 Second Team votes
LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard figure to be seeing a lot of each other over the next two weeks. That will be the small forward matchup in the NBA Finals. Just like last year, it should be a good one, because both players were named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team on Monday. Neither the Miami Heat nor the San Antonio Spurs have anyone on the All-Defensive First Team, which was voted on by the media and has Defensive Player of the
If you win Defensive Player of the Year, you should probably be on the All-Defensive First Team, right? Wrong. New York Knicks center Tyson Chandler, who won Defensive Player of the Year honors this season, was bumped to the Second Team. The Orlando Magic’s Dwight Howard was the center on the First Team. Defensive Player of the Year voting was done by a media panel, while the All-Defensive Teams were chosen by the NBA’s 30 coaches, who could not vote for players on
