The Starting 5 – What’s Up With These All-NBA Teams?

It’s Friday, May 24 – apologies, we’re a day late. I’m still too bitter to watch any of the Eastern Conference Final, but I’ll return to real-time coverage when the Finals begin a week from now. In the meantime, let’s take a look around the rest of the league.

1. Are These Some of the Worst All-NBA Teams We’ve Ever Seen?

The NBA has released its top squads today, and I couldn’t help but marvel at them the way you marvel at an ugly baby. “But how is this baby so ugly?” you wonder to yourself. “All babies are cute.”

Except they’re not. Here’s the All-NBA First Team: Giannis, Harden, Steph, Paul George, and Nikola Jokic. This is the most yawn-inducing first team I’ve ever seen. I thought Kevin Durant is the best player in the NBA now – where is he? Kawhi is the best two-way player in the league – where is he? And Nikola Jokic looks more like a Bolshevik than an All-NBA player. Also, does anyone smell a West Coast bias?

The craziest thing about the All-NBA teams? The All-NBA Second Team is by far the best squad of the three teams. I will take Embiid, Durant, Lillard, Leonard, and Irving all day over the First Team. Embiid and KD were absolutely robbed of not being on the First Team. And nobody takes a snub like Lillard.

The Third Team is closer to a comedy troupe than an All-NBA squad: Russ, Blake, LeBron, Rudy Gobert, and Kemba Walker. In the modern, pace-and-space NBA, that’s an All-NBA team? That team shoots 23% from beyond the arc and puts up 84 ppg.

And don’t get me started on the All-Defense Teams. Again, the Second Team would wipe the floor with the First Team.

2. The Battle of the Babies

Two of my least favorite people in the NBA are Kevin Durant and Chris Broussard. Yes, I realize that Chris Broussard isn’t an NBA player, but the FS1 talking head is still an NBA person. Anyway, we all know how sensitive KD is, and Broussard has been chirping at him for years.

The latest tiff started with Broussard claiming that he and KD text all the time, mentioning that “there have been days, a couple of days we’ve texted for 2, 3 hours straight about life, about basketball, about media, about faith.” Except Durant then immediately tweeted back that Broussard doesn’t even have his number, which is hilarious.

Broussard basically depicts himself as a 12-year-old girl, texting his crush into the wee hours of the night. He says that he and Durant have a “love-hate” relationship, but it sounds like Broussard is trying to will that into existence. Responding to Durant, Broussard said that even if he and KD don’t have each other’s’ digits, they’ve DMed many times – it’s all the same. Are these two morons or what?

At the end of the day, these two are both paid millions to act like babies on a national stage. It’s incredibly entertaining to follow I highly, highly recommend you check it all out. KD is a total bitch of a superstar, but at the end of the day, he’s still one of the best to ever do it, and is about to win his third straight title. Burner Twitter accounts or not, he’s Kevin Fucking Durant. Chris Broussard is just a loser and there’s nothing more to it. He’s the Steven Glansberg of sports media personas.

3. LeBron Has Already Begun His Recruiting

Word on the street is, LeBron has already been reaching out to Jimmy Butler and Kawhi Leonard to see who’ll be joining him LA next season. LeBron is the biggest whore in the NBA, but in fairness, he kind of has to be. The Lakers don’t exactly sell themselves like they used to.

Kawhi would likely be the best-case scenario. Watching him single-handedly rip the Sixers to shreds in a seven-game playoff series was like watching Michelangelo diffuse a bomb. He’s the best two-way player in the NBA, and he’s only just finishing up his age-27 season.

Jimmy Butler is more complicated. Since his season ended, he’s been giving subtle hints that he’ll be moving on from Philadelphia. Up until the playoffs, I would’ve said “good riddance,” but we saw a different Jimmy Buckets in the postseason. Sixers coach Brett Brown consistently referred to him as “the adult in the room,” which was the perfect way to sum up the calming, veteran presence Jimmy brought to the court. On several occasions, he single-handedly held off Raptors rallies and willed the Sixers to wins. On one hand, it was frustrating (where had this been??), but on the other hand, it was beautiful, and oh so necessary.

Butler is also a few years older than Kawhi, and will be 30 by the time next season starts. Is he really what the Lakers need? He doesn’t play defense the way he used to (certainly not in the regular season), though he can certainly get hot, he doesn’t have a particularly notable shooting stroke. Sound like anyone you already know on the Lakers? This pairing would essentially be LeBron and Lebron-lite.

I don’t see Kawhi or Jimmy heading to the Lakers this offseason. But I’d be absolutely shocked if they got Butler.

4. Top 10 List – How The Warriors Are Spending Their Downtime

The Dubs have a lot of time to kill while they await the conclusion of the Eastern Conference Finals. Here’s what they’ve been up to:

10. Andrew Bogut ponders whether the Cavaliers will retire his jersey

9. Warriors PR staff wonders how the team can get more Asian

8. Once a day, Steve Kerr calls Phil Jackson to have a chuckle over nearly taking the Knicks job

7. Draymond’s been getting lost in his favorite hobby – photography

6. Boogie Cousins is unironically trying to maneuver his way back to the Kings

5. KD is relishing his last few ghost tweets from the Oracle Arena desktops

4. Andre Iguodala brainstorms new ways to make reporters uncomfortable

3. Klay keeps running the numbers over and over again, desperate to figure out how Kemba made an All-NBA team over him – jokes aside, it’s gonna cost him tens of millions

2. Shaun Livingston continues pinching himself

1. Steph keeps ignoring Drake’s calls, but finally he catches Curry on the phone: “Just wanna let you know, as soon as the Raptors are out, Imma be pullin for the Warriors man”

5. My Five Favorite Moments of the Season

5. Not sure what was funnier – the salacious rumors about Dwight Howard and a transsexual, or his subsequent, season-ending gluteal injury. Hmmmmm

4. The Sixers rid themselves of Markelle Fultz. I sincerely wish him the worst

3. The whole Dwayne Wade farewell tour was fantastic, but this was clearly the highlight. And of course, shoutout to Dirk as well

2. The Clippers come back from 31 down in the third quarter to stun the Warriors in the playoffs (are you noticing the trend of the Warriors losing?)

1. Embiid caps a Game 3 rout of the Raptors with a windmill dunk – it was all downhill from there