All NBA has always been more about stats and less about team record. So when a guy averages 30.3 ppg, 8.2 rpg, 6.2 apg, 1.3 spg, 1.1 bpg with an eFG of 59 and a TS% of 61.9 he should absolutely be on an All NBA Team. And the games played issue is much less a thing when a lot of the other players played a similar level of games (Butler for example played 1 more game than him).
Tell that to Bradley Beal, Trae Young, Damián Lillard, etc that all had huge box score #'s certain years and got snubbed mostly due to team record. There are people that get snubbed for All-NBA due to team record littered throughout NBA history. Your theory on this just to protect Lebron is completely wrong
Beal made the 3rd team in 21. Young made it this year (though didn't as a 2nd year player with similar stats). Until this year Lillard had made 4 consecutive All NBA Teams.
No player in NBA history has averaged 30/8/6 and not been on an All NBA Team.
2019-20(72 game season) Bradley Beal. 30/4/6 Team record 25-47
Really? You gonna hang your hat on your entire argument being right because of 4 rebounds per game? Take a look at both seasons. The similarities except for rebounding is ridiculously close.
https://stathead.com/basketball/pcm_finder.cgi?request=1&sum=0&player_id1=bealbr01&p1yrfrom=2020&player_id2=jamesle01&p2yrfrom=2022
well aware, 1 time is an exception not a rule. Obviously they could have easily had Beal instead of Simmons or Westbrook, but I also think that was not a team record thing. Simmons was a DPOY contender that year which really helped him make the 3rd Team especially since Simmons had more points than Westbrook. Westbrook was statistically in the same general range as Beal in his year in Houston with Harden. So Beal could have made it but there were also plenty of reasons he did not that had nothing to do with team record (his atrocious defense has always held him back for example). That was also Beal's 1st real mega season as a #1 option. Post season things are often delayed because voters don't want it to be a fluke, which also helps explain why he made it the following year with lesser stats in many categories (though more ppg) on a team that was also below .500 (though better - they also had Westbrook).
Adrian Dantley 1981-82 30/6/4 Team record 25-57
He was 31/6/5 in 1982-83 but played only 22 games so I am not counting that one.
I can go on with guys scoring 27-30 PPG
Zach Lavine 2019-20 Team record 31-41 27.5/5/5 is a simple, recent, quick example
They only had 2 All NBA Teams in the 80's. They didn't add the 3rd Team until the 88-89 season. I figured that was obvious. And Dantley made the 2nd Team in in 80-81 on a 28 win team when he went for basically 31/6.5/4. So he was good enough in 81 but not 82 despite being on a terrible team both times, which leads to the conclusion it wasn't team record but competition for the spot. Who you kicking off for Dantley in 82? Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Alex English, or Bernard King? English and King weren't as good in 81, so Dantley (and Marques Johnson) were on the 2nd team, but King and English both improved for 82 and made the team ahead of Dantley (Johnson was injured part of that season). It isn't a complicated thing.
I already went through 19-20 with Beal (who was better than LaVine that season), who you taking off the list for LaVine in 20, Simmons or Westbrook? Easy enough to say Simmons in retrospect given the last 2 years, but Simmons had more votes than Westbrook, who was quite simply statistically better than LaVine (just as he was Beal). Perhaps if LaVine knew the game was played on 2 ends of the floor, he would have made the team instead of Simmons or Westbrook. But the writers clearly favored Westbrook's superior stats and Simmons DPOY level defense over the offensive chuckers that couldn't guard a chair in Beal and LaVine.
There are plenty of examples of guys playing on bad teams making the All NBA Team. Cousins did it in back to back seasons on 29 and 33 win teams playing just 59 and 65 games and he was on the 2nd Team both those years (so it wasn't close). Heck that same 19-20 season you keep focusing on Lillard was on the 2nd team on a 35-39 Portland team.
Obviously most of the time, the best players in the sport are also on the best teams. There is after all a reason they are the best players in the sport, so by and large the guys that have the 15 best seasons, also happen to be guys on the better teams. It will always be that way, but the writers often reward players for great individual seasons even if they aren't on a winning team. Now if two guys are really close then sure games played, teams wins, and other factors like that may separate them (as good as any way to do it), but a guy that is just far superior statistically is going to make the team over a guy that is not if they are similar caliber of players on both ends of the floor.
