The Weekside: Weighing Anthony Davis’ odds to make the All-NBA team and a $24 million bonus

Anthony Davis will only play 61 games this season. He has a series of injuries — knee, shoulder, back — that led to the New Orleans Pelicans shutting him down for the rest of the year. In addition to missing 21 games this season, more than one-fourth of the year, we know he will also miss Team USA’s attempt to win gold this Summer at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

There is a much bigger question though: Will Anthony Davis also miss out on the All-NBA team?

The largest fallout of him failing to make it for a second straight season (he was on the second team last year) would be economic. Due to the so-called Derrick Rose rule in the league’s collective bargaining agreement, a player who makes two All-NBA teams (or one NBA MVP award or starts in two All-Star Games) during their rookie contract is eligible for a larger maximum salary on their next deal if they stay with the same team. This “super max” means their starting salary in the first year of a contract extension can be up to 30% of the salary cap as opposed to the normal maximum of 25% available to players without these premier accolades on their resume.

So depending upon the exact salary cap figure for the 2016-17 season, that 5% difference could end up costing AD some $24 million over the life of a new, five-year contract if he fails to make the All-NBA team this year. (There is the seemingly nonexistent, but never-the-less-technically-possible, chance that Davis really, really hates playing in New Orleans and will sign a one-year, tiny, qualifying-offer deal this summer then become an unrestricted free agent the following offseason when the salary cap jumps even further — but nobody of his caliber has ever done this before, and he almost certainly will not either.)

One huge plus for AD is that he averaged 24.3 points, 10.3 rebounds, and 2.0 blocks per game on the court this season. That is hard to ignore even while missing 21 games. Then again, he does face some somewhat stiff competition at the forward spot.

LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, and Draymond Green are locks. So AD can forget about first or second team. He will be battling it out for third-team honors with the likes of Paul George (23.5 ppg), LaMarcus Aldridge (17.7 and 8.5 per game while sacrificing touches on a historically good team), Carmelo Anthony (21.8 and 7.9), and Giannis Antetokounmpo (16.8, 7.6, and 4.1 while turning into a triple-double machine). Another dark horse contender could be Dirk Nowitzki (18.8 ppg and fresh off a 40-point outing), who could pick up some “legacy” votes by nostalgic media members.

Some others may get votes, but those seem to be the leading contenders for the third team. If I was voting today (I certainly don’t have a ballot), PG and AD would be my two choices for the third team. His numbers are simply too good for any of the other forwards to displace him.

More good news for Davis: While it is hard to make an All-NBA team while playing fewer than 70 games, it has happened at least once in 14 of the past 15 seasons. In fact, excluding the lockout season of 2011-12, exactly 41 out of the last 225 All-NBA players, or nearly one in five (18.2%), have played fewer than 70 games. Anthony Davis himself has done it even, as he played just 68 games last year while making the second team.

Unfortunately, there is a big difference between 70 and 61. And it has proven extraordinarily hard to make an All-NBA team if you play as few games as Anthony Davis did this season.

Just eight players in the past 15 seasons have done so, with five of those who have received the honor playing at the relatively less-competitive center position. The always-dominant, yet always-injured, Yao Ming accounted for three of those instances himself, and only three non-centers (Dwyane Wade, Chris Webber, and Allen Iverson) have accomplished this feat.

Worse still, it seems to be getting harder to make it while playing so little

Only two players in the past four years have gotten the honor while playing even less than 66 games, whereas that happened 11 times in the prior nine seasons. This could be a coincidence. Or it may suggest that voters have become more discerning in today’s environment of voting transparency and scrutiny towards filling out a fair ballot. Nobody really noticed if you voted for Yao or Dwyane in 2007 despite them missing around 40% of the season. But now? You’ll definitely get fans of “snubbed” players complaining in your Twitter mentions.

There is some encouraging news for AD though. DeMarcus Cousins made the second team just last season (albeit at center) while playing only 59 games. So Anthony Davis’ $24 million “bonus” hinges on him doing something that is not without — even recent — precedent.

Still, making an All-NBA team while playing just 61 games has proven to be an uphill battle, particularly in a league with so many capable forwards.

Although perhaps there is one more reason for the New Orleans superstar to be optimistic.

Many voters will be aware of how much making the All-NBA team means to AD. And since Davis is a nice, likable guy, perhaps that gets him a few extra votes. After all, awards voted on by the media are inherently going to give at least a slight edge to players the media likes.

They say nice guys finish last.

But if Davis makes an All-NBA team this year — in an injury-shortened season when he may not really deserve it — this could be one case where a nice guy finishes with $24 million.

Tip of the Week

Clyde Frazier is the best color commentator in the NBA and perhaps human. Do what Mr. @Jimmyist says to do, and if you don’t already have an Instagram account, then this is the perfect impetus to joining us all in 2013 and getting on that horse.

Words With Friends

This week’s five must-read articles about the NBA. Excerpts here — click through to read the full piece.

1. Why everyone about to get overpaid won’t be getting overpaid
by Kelly Scaletta, Today’s Fastbreak

You’re going to hear it a lot this summer. How did THIS player get paid THAT much money? But free agency, capitalism and the particular confluence of events make it an inevitability that, compared to what we’re seeing from a salary standpoint in the past, there’s just a lot of people who are going to be making serious bank this summer. Don’t confuse “overpaid” with market value.

2. You won’t believe how Nike lost Steph to Under Armour
by Ethan Sherwood Strauss, ESPN

On March 3, 2016, Business Insider relayed a note from Morgan Stanley analyst Jay Sole on Under Armour’s business prospects. In it, Curry’s potential worth to the company is placed at more than a staggering $14 billion. Sole’s call on UA’s stock is bearish relative to other prognosticators, but for one man’s power to change everything. His note reads, “UA’s U.S. basketball shoe sales have increased over 350 percent YTD. Its Stephen Curry signature shoe business is already bigger than those of LeBron, Kobe and every other player except Michael Jordan. If Curry is the next Jordan, our call will likely be wrong.”

3. Open Floor Podcast: Kemba Walker
by Lee Jenkins, Sports Illustrated

Jenkins and Walker begin the program by examining the Hornets’ startling success of late. Charlotte has won 15 of its last 18 games, largely thanks to Walker. The two examine Charlotte’s newfound flow on offense and what changes have led the team to be competing in the upper tier of the Eastern Conference. Later, Walker takes a stroll down memory lane and discusses some of his favorites plays and games from UConn’s 2011 national championship. Walker also touches on what it means to be a point guard from New York City and how he’s changed his game since entering the NBA.

4. Brotherhood: As Their Careers Diverge, LeBron and Carmelo Share Unique Friendship
by Howard Beck, Bleacher Report

On the night before the biggest high school basketball game in modern times, two teenage prodigies—strangers, soon to be rivals—sat on a hotel staircase and bonded. They talked for hours, though, only briefly about basketball. The boys had so much else in common: raised by single moms; brought up in broken neighborhoods, amid drugs and gunfire and the blare of police sirens; their basketball skills honed on decaying asphalt courts. The game was their escape, their salvation, and it had brought these two boys—a passing wizard from Akron, Ohio, and a scoring maestro from Baltimore—to this modest hotel in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, across from a Sesame Street theme park.

5. Feelings Aren’t Numbers: Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
by Steve McPherson, 1500 ESPN Twin Cities

Are Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns the Wolves’ Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, respectively? Rubio can still be Mick Fleetwood, shepherding the team forward from behind the kit. Pekovic as McVie? OK, maybe not at this point. But Zach LaVine can be their third option, their Christine McVie. But if the Wolves are going to complete the equivalent of the transition from top-drawer blues band to world-bestriding pop juggernaut, it has to go beyond changing the players. Fans just have to hope they can make their Rumours without all the infighting, infidelity and drugs. That might finally make loving the Wolves fun.

The Unfollowing Is What to Watch

The Warriors and Spurs are so good that we have to find other, non-basketball ways to make the rest of the NBA interesting. So with March Madness preventing the NBA from even bothering to have any national televised games for a second straight Thursday, a Cavs/Nets game is as good as any to watch.

Why? For the disaster of it all.

Brooklyn has long been a smoldering stench pit that is too dull to even waste time acknowledging. So you get to enjoy that. And Cleveland? The Cavs are now an eternal inferno of blazing Schadenfreude that you can no longer help but revel in. This isn’t the typical train wreck that rubberneckers slow down to get a glimpse of while holding up traffic and delaying everybody’s daily commute. This is something an entire freeway full of tired, hungry commuters stop and get out of their vehicle to look at, forgetting that they even have a home to go home to. This is like a throw-back-the-clock ghost game played by Shoeless Joe Jackson and company in Field of Dreams, a glowing spell of awful hilarity that can no easier be broken than a tractor beam that aliens use to abduct rural folk who later tell their story to a student filmmaker who puts his conspiracy theory documentary on YouTube for free rather than selling out distribution to a corporation because the world has a right to be woke.

Today, we are all that lightly educated hillbilly who was intimately touched by the probes and wires of these extraterrestrial beings. Now we are all seeing the truth as plain as ever, uncovering the truths that they don’t want you to know. They don’t want you to win at Twitter Woke LeBron Master Plan Decoding.

They really don’t.

But we will divine the truth in these breadcrumb clues that The King is leaving throughout the social online worldsphere. We have the proof. LeBron, if you have not heard, has ceased to follow the Cleveland Cavaliers official account on Twitter.

You know what this means, right?

That he is clearly leaving the team he just returned to less than two years ago. It’s the only answer, especially coming on top of LeBron’s cryptic tweets, LeBron working out with Dwyane Wade in Miami, LeBron saying he would take a pay cut to play with Chris Paul and Carmelo, all the poorly sourced chatter we’ve heard about Kyrie Irving wanting out of Ohio, a stretch of losing three out of four games in late February, the firing of their coach while in first place, and Kevin Love’s general inability to fit in (or fit out) with the franchise on or off the court.

He is as good as gone. We know this because Twitter tells us so, and we can also figure out where he is headed next by looking at who hei is still following.

Paul George

LeBron gained much respect for his younger rival during their heated battles in the Eastern Conference, and has been planning to join forces with PG since they sealed their long-term Central Division takeover plans with a secret Illuminati handshake at mid-court during a nationally televised playoff game.

Udonis Haslem

LeBron recently mentioned that the Cavaliers lack an enforcer. He was clearly referring to his fondness for everybody’s favorite Miami Heat roughneck, Udonis Haslem. So he will rejoin Miami this offseason to play with U.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus

This has no wider significance. LeBron just knows that Veep is the best show on television, and that you should be watching it. Seriously, how do you not watch Veep? What is even wrong with you? If you watched Veep, this whole Trump thing never would have happened. It’s basically all your fault. Watch Veep already.

Stephen Curry

LeBron has come to terms with the fact that he cannot beat his sporting and sneaker pitchman rival, both on the court and at the Footlocker. So he will team up with Steph and together they will watch the world burn.

Liverpool FC

LeBron is a known admirer of both Jürgen Klopp and umlauts. He will take his talents to soccer.

Macklemore

LeBron follows Macklemore. Because (a) he has no soul, and (b) he plans to buy the Cavs this offseason and move them to Seattle, where his best friend Macklemore can explain to him what it’s like to be a white person. Who could pass up such a lucrative opportunity?

Kobe Bryant

LeBron has decided to follow in the footsteps of Kobe and retire. He saw what Megatron and Patrick Willis did and has realized that retiring young in his prime is the only way he can be happy. Not because of the potential for brain damage due to head drama.

But because, in the year 2016, people conjure up the dumbest sports stories and he is on the verge of going insane if he has to continue listening to all this.