2021 NBA awards: Final picks for All-NBA, All-Defensive and All-Rookie teams

All-NBA Second Team

• Chris Paul, Phoenix Suns
• Paul George, LA Clippers
• Kawhi Leonard, LA Clippers
• Jimmy Butler, Miami Heat
• Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers

Now that we’ve gotten past the narrow omissions and Third Team selections, we can generally keep it more positive with our Second Team.

We’ll start with the two LA Clippers selections. One could make a case for Randle over Paul George, but the Clippers finished six games ahead of the Knicks in the standings, and PG was incredible: 23.3 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game on red-hot .467/.411/.868 shooting while doubling as one of the game’s rangiest wing defenders. Even with 18 games missed, he gets the edge.

Kawhi Leonard was ever-so-slightly better than George this season, putting up 24.8 points, 6.5 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game on .512/.398/.885 splits. He’s still impossible to stop one-on-one, and he remains a terrifying, all-encompassing defender when he’s fully locked in. He’s not quite in the realm of First Team All-NBA or the league’s top MVP candidates thanks to 20 missed games, but Second Team is as far as he could possibly fall.

Similarly, Jimmy Butler deserves All-NBA recognition despite missing 20 games himself. It may seem like we’re picking and choosing when availability matters and when it doesn’t based on some of these selections, and maybe that’s true! But Butler was just as good this season as he was in the NBA Bubble when he led the Heat to the Finals, and his incredible two-way play more than makes up for the amount of time missed. He was the Heat’s best player, posting a 21-7-7-2 stat line that doesn’t fully speak to his impact on turning Miami’s season around.

Chris Paul dropping to Third Team wouldn’t be the end of the world, especially since his 16.4 points, 8.9 assists and 4.5 rebounds per game easily make up the least impressive stat line on our list. But CP3 finished mere percentage points shy of the 50-40-90 club (.499/.395/.934), helped the Phoenix Suns win 17 more games than last season and had an immeasurable impact on boosting the trajectory of a promising young team from “bottom-rung playoff squad” to “title contender” overnight. Phoenix’s culture turnaround was already in motion last season, but he’s arguably a top-five MVP candidate, even if the brunt of his value is not found on the stat sheet.

Finally, Joel Embiid has a case for a First Team spot, especially since he’s eligible as a forward and a center. The Process put up a gargantuan 28.5 points, 10.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.4 blocks and 1.0 steals per game on the kind of efficiency you don’t typically see from seven-footers: 51.3 percent from the floor, 37.7 percent from 3, and 85.9 percent from the free-throw line, where he spends a considerable amount of time as one of the NBA’s most unstoppable, foul-drawing machines.

Embiid was second on my MVP ballot, and even missing 21 games doesn’t change that. It logically follows that he should be on the First Team as a forward. But doing so would bump someone down from the First Team and move Rudy Gobert up to the Second Team center slot. The Third Team would then need a center, and as good as Bam Adebayo was this season, moving him into that spot and having to boot Randle, Tatum, Booker, Beal or anyone bumped down from the First/Second Team as a result of moving Embiid up doesn’t feel right to me.

Sixers fans shouldn’t be too upset about this; Embiid being listed as a forward is ridiculous, given that everyone knows his true spot is center. So instead of directing your anger at me, the start of your letters to the manager should read: “Dear NBA, please get rid of the dated positional limitations to All-NBA selections so we stop running into this problem.”