San Antonio Spurs: Takeaways from NBA.com’s All-Decade team release
Did Aldridge get snubbed from the All-Decade Second Team?
To justify LaMarcus Aldridge’s case for jumping from Third Team to Second Team — which would basically make top-10 player in all of basketball and top-four forward of the decade — we’ll use NASCAR terms.
If one racer covers the track ten times at a “very good” speed, and the other racer covers that same track seven times at “great” speed, which one was more noteworthy?
In essence, that covers the jist of Aldridge’s case to have made the All-Decade Team ahead of either Blake Griffin or Anthony Davis. Each of the aforementioned Second Team members had more significant pure “primes” than Aldridge did, especially Davis.
But, it’s worth wondering: how paramount was longevity to these media members, when it came time to make the ballot?
As one philosopher once noted: availability is the best ability.
And while Aldridge was helping push 50-win Portland Trail Blazers teams into the postseason as a second banana in 2009-10 and 2010-11, Davis was busy carving out a legacy as a high school legend in Chicago, and Griffin was a nightly SportsCenter fixture for a 32-win Clippers team.
The total numbers tell a similar story of Aldridge’s availability, too. To briefly illustrate that:
Games played (including postseason):
- Aldridge (796 games)
- Griffin (657 games)
- Davis (479 games)
Postseason series record:
- Aldridge (12 postseason series, 4 series wins)
- Griffin (10 postseason series, 3 series wins)
- Davis (3 postseason series, 1 series win)
Total points scored (including postseason)
- Aldridge (16,707 total points)
- Griffin (14,322 total points)
- Davis (11,456 total points)
All-Star appearances + All-NBA appearances
- Aldridge (7-time All-Star, 5-time All-NBA)
- Griffin (6-time All-Star, 5-time All-NBA)
- Davis (6-time All-Star, 3-time All-NBA)
As a disclaimer, during NBA.com’s official tally, they did not include postseason play when listing the top-10 scorers of the decade (Aldridge ranked sixth, and first among power forwards and centers).
Even so, the Spurs tallied more regular season points than Griffin did in both the regular season and postseason.
All of this points to a common theme: Aldridge’s game generally goes unnoticed in comparison to his adversaries, but it’s difficult to imagine that 479 games of Davis is more impactful than 796 from Aldridge.
Or, that despite Aldridge and Griffin’s comparable production, Griffin was behind the eight-ball by a year, and racked up hundreds of DNPs, but still produced at a higher level than the smooth-shooting Texan.
By the decade’s end, only two forwards (LeBron James and Kevin Durant) produced more win shares than Aldridge did.
As a secondary storyline to Aldridge’s Third Team nod, there were questions as to if even that was deserved. ESPN’s The Jump even went as far as to say that the lack of “sexiness” to his game made the selection a surprise.
Malika Andrews likely summed up the views of most of the basketball world with her take on Aldridge’s recognition.
"“He hasn’t been this big name, main attraction, so for me, when I saw that he was ranked sixth in total points scored, that was a little bit surprising. I forgot about that.”"
The panel threw out names such as Dirk Nowitzki or Kevin Garnett — both of which — saw their careers curtail into post-prime production in the 2010s. Both made an NBA Finals appearance (Nowitzki won his in 2011).
After 2011-12, neither made an appearance as an All-League star, or advanced past the first round as a marquee player.
All in all, Aldridge’s case is more preference-based than anything. It’s solely dependent on whether gaudy box score stats and peak are valued over longevity and availability. To Aldridge’s credit, at least, it appears he’s done enough to at least generate a debate.