Executive of the Year:
John Hammond, Milwaukee Bucks
This one was one of the actual NBA winners. But, pretty hard to disagree with what he's done. He elected to draft PG Brandon Jennings #10 overall despite rumors about his immaturity and the strange HS-to-Europe route which had never been done. Jennings proceeded to tear up the league in his rookie season, more on that later.
Hammond tabbed Scotty Skiles as his coach after he became GM a couple of seasons ago and the team has become much improved in many areas, mainly defense. He also made some successful moves by bringing in the likes of Delfino, Salmons, Stackhouse and Kurt Thomas to round out the roster.
Milwaukee made the playoffs this season, which I doubt many would have predicted, and had Bogut not been hurt who knows what might have happened in round 1. Kudos, Mr. Hammond.
Coach of the Year:
Alvin Gentry, Phoenix Suns
Since I live in Phoenix, I might be a bit biased. Not because I like him or the Suns more, but just because I get to see this franchise up close and personal on a nightly basis. The job that Gentry has done with this squad, particularly with Stoudemire, is nothing short of amazing. For all those nay-sayers that think he's just running D'Antoni's system...you are severely mistaken. Yes, they went back to the old run-n-gun after a brief relapse under Terry Porter, but Gentry's Suns teams have two major factors in their favor that D'Antoni never had. 1) Team defense and 2) A deep bench. D'Antoni never cared about either. Alvin Gentry is one of the few coaches I've seen who trusts his bench guys as much as he does late in games. There are times that Nash doesn't even re-enter the game until about 5 minutes to go in the 4th. Remarkable!
Back to the Stoudemire topic. Under D'Antoni, Stat was a grouchy, self-centered, pompous ballhog who could get you 35 but would only have 6 rebounds and maybe 1 block. However, he did it (look to the 4th quarter benching against Dallas in FEB) Gentry has gotten Stat to play the game the team needs him to play. Explosive on both ends and committed to rebounding. Rumor even has it that Stat, not Nash, is the one who organizes all the team dinners and activities on the road. Playing like a leader. I credit Gentry with a lot of that.
As Phoenix looks to LA in the conference finals I think they owe a HUGE thanks to Alvin Gentry.
Most Improved Player:
Brook Lopez, New Jersey Nots (that is not a typo)
The better Lopez twin really became quite a lot for opposing centers to handle in 2009-10. HE improved his scoring by 5 points and his rebounding also went up. He posted some monster games this season, including 10 double-doubles in 15 games in December. He did get shut down by some of the better centers, including Dwight Howard, but who didn't? Lopez also started every game for New Jersey this season, which is something most NBA centers can't claim. He is much improved and if NJ can win the lottery and land John Wall they'll have themselves a nice young nucleus. If they can somehow use those Russian dollars (and whores) to lure LBJ...look out!
*If brother Robin can stay healthy he could be your 2011 Most Improved. Health hampered him down the stretch this season.
Here's the statistical improvements
2008/09: 13 PPG, 8.1 RPG, 1.0 APG, 1.8 BPG
2009/10: 18.8 PPG, 8.6 RPG, 2.3 APG, 1.7 BPG
6th Man of the Year:
Carl Landry Houston Rockets/Sacramento Kings
OK, let me start by saying it is pretty hard to argue with Jamal Crawford as 6th man of the year. He did get a vast majority of the real votes. He played on a better team and definitely gave his team a huge boost off the bench. However, let's throw out the playoffs thing and look at these two side-by-side.
Landry was among the best reserves in the league with 16.8 PPG this season, .5 more than Crawford. That's basically a push. Landry is a big man, so obviously he gets more rebounds, and Crawford as a guard obviously gets more assists. Basically another push there. They averaged the same amount of steal - advantage Landry. I understand that Landry shoots mostly around the basket, but Crawford's .364 FG percentage makes me want to gag! That's low for a quality guard. He can hoist it with the best of 'em, but like fellow 6th man J.R. Smith can have nasty cold streaks. Landry was a consistent .536 from the floor. They both shot free-throws over .80%. I'll take that from my big-man all day! And they played basically the same minutes, right around 30.
Again, playoffs and good teams aside, I think I like Landry.
There's also some fancy mumbo jumbo stat that proves Landry is the best reserve in the league. I found it about a week ago but I lost the link. Trust me, it backed it up.
Crawford is excellent, and you can't go wrong with him, but I'll take Landry by a hair.
2009/10 Stats: 16.8 PPG, 5.8 RPG, .8 BPG, 30.9 MPG
Defensive Player of the Year:
Chris Andersen, Denver Nuggets
I went back and forth on this one. For the sake of being different, let's give the Birdman his due. His .84 blocks for every personal foul bested Dwight Howard's .79 He also turned in a monster 4.05 blocks for every 48 minutes, which was better than Howard's 3.85 per 48. If you stretch that out over Howard's minutes he would have almost 240 blocks on the year. That's better than Howard's 228!
Basically, whenever he came in for Denver it was an instant block party.
Like Crawford, you really can't go wrong with Howard. I'd just rather shed some light on other players.
Rookie of the Year:
Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors
Tyreke Evans (real NBA winner) and Brandon Jennings are both great choices as well, but Curry was unreal in the 2nd half while the other two tuckered out a bit. I'll give him the nod for finishing strong.
I also like the fact that Curry's numbers helped his team. In Golden State wins (not many of them) his scoring jumped to 20 PPG and his APG were around 7. With Evans and Jennings those numbers were much closer to the same, meaning their great performances didn't necessarily help the team that much.
Jennings was down to 13.8 PPG in April, after averaging over 22 in November. Curry on the other hand averaged over 26 PPG in April, and finished on a high note dropping 42 8 and 9 in the final contest. In his last 20 games he dropped at least 6 dimes 16 times, and only turned the ball over 3 times or more 6 times. Nice.
Too bad Golden State sucks.
(Non LBJ) Most Valuable Player:
It would be pretty boring for me to get on here and talk about how great LBJ was again this season. We all know that. Plus, he's got enough ass-kissers, and he and the Cavs are dropping a huge deuce in the conference semis right now anyway. This could be almost as awkward as Dirk's MVP when his team got annihilated in the playoffs.
So here it is - Jesus' 2010 MVP goes to...
Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City
He was the scoring champion of the league, and if we're going by the definition of the award I don't know that anyone was more valuable to his team. He is the star on a small-market franchise that obviously needs to build around him if they have hopes of success in that kind of a city. He packs the seats on a nightly basis and is a must-see Sportscenter highlight. His stretch of at least 25 points in a game was remarkable, 29! And a majority of those were 30+!
He averaged more than a steal and a block per game to go with his scoring output. Look to his block on Kobe in the playoffs to see some of his defensive prowess.
On top of all that, he was counted on, like all star players, to take a high percentage of his teams shots. The Durantula took over 25% of the Thunder's field goals this year, compared to Kobe's 22 and LBJ's 23%. You might think hoisting that many his percentages wouldn't be great, but they were. .476 on FG, .365 on 3FG and 90% FT. He is money in the bank.
Imagine if the Celts would have gotten that #2 pick like they were supposed to? I'm just saying. The Championship was nice though.
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