All-NBA First, Second, and Third teams announced! Jazz shut out.

The NBA's best players perform the best when it counts. They also get the most media time, have the most fans, sell the most merch, have the most twitter followers, and get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to getting calls from the refs in close games. They also, usually, are also the players who perform the best when it counts. I could care less about awards and hardware for individuals. What I do care about is team success. And it's easier to reach team goals when your team is led on the court by one of the best NBA players. Things go your way.

Without one of these de facto Top 15 NBA players your club either has to rely upon extreme cohesion, luck, or the other team pooping the bed in order to get by. The teams that advance in the playoffs seem to have at least one (if not more) of these guys on their team. This is not a new phenomina either, when WE had Karl Malone and John Stockton on our team we got far, and they were put on these All-NBA teams yearly. We know the best players perform the best. And they make life easier for your team -- which leads to win. Which is why I seem to harp about this a lot.

If the guys leading your team are not Top 15 players, and we have guys sitting behind them who have the potential to be Top 15 dudes, you are only hurting your teams' PRESENT and hurting your teams' FUTURE by being stubborn about things.

Anyway, here's the first team.

The All-NBA Second, Third, and "others getting vote" lists after the jump.

All-NBA Second and Third Teams:

I wish I knew who was voting for which guys == well you kind of can tell. The same people who make the regular season schedule, it seems...

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Other players receiving votes:

So Big Al, our best player who got us to the playoffs has almost HALF the vote as LaMarcus got? See, I think these awards should not matter -- but clearly they do as there are unfair advantages that are afforded to the winners. The NBA isn't going to get rid of the unfair advantages. So if there are unfair advantages to be had, a greater "regard" for our players and their talents -- I'd rather the Jazz benefit from them, and not be victimized because we're on the wrong side of the 'market / talent' axis.

The Jazz will only advance far in the playoffs when we have Top 15 guys leading our team. You get them via trades, free agency, and the draft. To trade for a Top 15 guy we'd have to gut our team. To sign one as a FA we'd need to be attractive to FAs. We're not. This leaves ONLY the draft. The first part of the draft solution is to get high lotto picks, we did that. The second part is to play them. Duh.