The 2010’s NBA All-Decade Team

LeBron and Durant as forwards, the rest is up in the air

The methodology for determining the NBA All-Decade Team is simply counting. For every year a player makes:

• All NBA First Team, 5 points
• All NBA Second Team, 4 points
• All NBA Third Team, 3 points

And then, if he had made any of those teams and wins the NBA Championship the same year, he gets an extra 2 points, and if he made the Finals and lost, one point.

LeBron James and Kevin Durant are so far ahead of the rest of the field that the competition for other slots was quite close. But here is how I tabulated it. I separated “power forwards” and “small forwards” when possible, and “shooting guards” and “point guards, but those distinctions are somewhat arbitrary and I wasn’t beholden to them.

First Team

Dwight Howard, Center, 22 points

Kevin Durant, Forward, 48 points

Lebron James, Forward, 59 points

James Harden, Guard, 28 points

Stephen Curry, Guard (point), 34 points

Second Team

Anthony Davis, Center, 15 points

Blake Griffin, Forward, 18 points

Paul George, Forward, 17 points

Kobe Bryant, Guard, 22 points

Russell Westbrook, Guard (point), 33 points

Third Team

Pau Gasol, Center, 13 points

LaMarcus Aldridge, Forward, 16 points

Dirk Nowitzki, Forward, 13 points

Dwyane Wade, Guard, 18 points

Chris Paul, Guard (point), 21 points

Several of these guys may make you think, they should be in to 00’s All-Decade Team, not 10’s. Several would have been, and especially if we had a half-decade team of 2006 to 2015. But it’s easy to forget that in the first half of the decade, Kobe, Dirk, Dwight, and Dwyane were still in their prime and dominant. The all-decade team shouldn’t have “recency bias.”

This probably should be a year-by-year record. “The All-NBA Team of the previous 10 seasons.” Then we’ll see drop-offs and replacements.

The longer one stays on the list, the more certain he’s a Hall of Famer.

James Leroy Wilson writes from Nebraska. He is the author of Ron Paul is a Nut (And So am I). Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Support through Paypal is greatly appreciated.