All verbiage in italics are quotes of John Hollinger at one of the links provided.

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insider/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=PERDiem-091231

Top 10 Players of the Decade -

1.) Tim Duncan
2.) Kevin Garnett
Unfairly lampooned for not leading a deeply flawed Minnesota team past the likes of L.A. and San Antonio, Garnett showed what he can do with some better help around him after he was traded to Boston. He led the league in PER in back-to-back seasons in Minnesota, but didn't get a single MVP vote the second year because his supporting cast was so bad.
In Boston, he proved his defensive dominance by leading one of the greatest defensive teams in history to a title. He made the All-Defense team every year of the decade, was a first-team pick eight times and won the defensive player of the year award in 2008; had he been traded to Boston a few years earlier he probably would have won the award a few more times.

Since I presume I'll need to defend this ranking to the larger world, I'll add two more facts. First, it will no doubt shock readers to learn that Garnett's career playoff PER is better than Bryant's and, in fact, ranks in the top 10 in post-merger history; his primary shortcoming in Minnesota wasn't a lack of mettle in the clutch, it was that he couldn't fire Kevin McHale. Second, recall that the one time this decade Garnett and Bryant met as the alpha males on their respective teams, Garnett's side rolled.
3.) Kobe Bryant
4.) Shaquille O'Neal
5.) Dirk Nowitzski
6.) Lebron James
7.) Steve Nash
8.) Chauncey Billups
9.) Dwayne Wade
10.) Paul Pierce
He didn't have the blow-up years players like McGrady, Vince Carter or Gilbert Arenas did, but he was phenomenally consistent and durable. Pierce kept his PER in the 20 range all decade, was a much better defender than most high-scoring wings and, of course, was the MVP of the 2008 NBA Finals.
He never made first-team All-NBA and never should have, but his body of work across the entire decade puts him on this list.


http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insider/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=PERDiem-091229


Best Teams Never to Win a Championship

1.) Dallas 2006
2.) Sacramento 2002
3.) Phoenix 2005-2007

Best Cinderellas

1.) New Jersey 2001-02
2.) Phoenix 2004-05
3.) Boston 2007-08
It wasn't as big a shock as the two above, but it's technically the biggest U-turn in league history. Boston traded much of its youth for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, kept just enough in reserve to help them along, and rode a tenacious defense to the title.

Best GMs

1.) Gregg Popovich/R C Buford - San Antonio
2.) Joe Dumars - Detroit
3.) Jerry West - Los Angeles/Memphis

Worst GMs

1.) Isiah Thomas - New York
2.) Kevin McHale - Minnesota
3.) Pete Babcock - Atlanta

Worst Draft Picks

1.) Darko Milicic
2.) Nikoloz Tskitishvili
3.) Kwame Brown

Best Award Votes

1.) Tim Duncan 2002 MVP
2.) Tony Parker 2007 Finals MVP
3.) Bruce Bowen 2001 2nd Team All-Defense

Worst Award Votes

1.) Adam Morrison Nov 2006 Rookie of the Month
2.) Steve Nash 2006 MVP
3.) Amare Stoudemire 2003 Rookie of the Year

Worst Developments

1.) AAU Ball: The U.S. still produces more talented players than any other country. Sadly, most of the best ones don't have a clue how to play until they head off to the college game at age 18. What happens until that time is a travesty, as our best talents seem to receive the least coaching while competing in AAU tournaments that mostly amount to glorified street-ball tournaments.
2.) Expansion of the world championships: The world championships should be a great tournament, the World Cup of basketball. Instead, it is unrelentingly awful until the final three games, by which time all the fans are so anesthetized from 118-54 blowouts that they can hardly be bothered to care.
Somehow, FIBA thought the way to make things more interesting would be to get more countries involved, so it expanded this year's field to 24 teams. This just makes a mockery of what should be a great event. There are, at most, 10 countries that are actually good at basketball; the rest are fillers. This is why the Olympics' 12-team format is perfect and FIBA's tournament is a mess.

3.) NBA's abandonment of the Pacific Northwest: Admittedly, this is a cause that's nearer and dearer to my heart. But the Grizzlies and Sonics both had enough fan support to continue as viable franchises; the departures of both were largely management failures.


Best Developments

1.) De-Riley-ization of the game: In a response to the increasingly rough tactics of the 1990s, personified by the brutish style Pat Riley's teams employed in New York and Miami, the league enforced handchecking rules and made other modifications to open up the floor. The result was a much-more-entertaining style of play and a rebound for the post-Jordan NBA in the second half of the decade. Ironically, Riley stumbled upon the one player best suited for the new rules (Dwyane Wade) and won a championship with him in 2006.
2.) Stars who get it: In contrast to the mostly me-first generation that came into the early-to-mid '90s, this generation's most talented players have been much better for the game. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Chris Paul, Chris Bosh, Brandon Roy and Yao Ming were the best players drafted from 2001 to 2006, and there isn't a bad apple in the bunch.
3.) Jerry Colangelo's one-man cure: He revitalized the U.S. national team, and with any luck, he'll do the same with the Basketball Hall of Fame by shining some light on the murky voting process and eliminating its blatant bias toward college coaches and away from NBA players.

Most Overrated Players

1.) Antoine Walker
Walker made All-Star teams in 2002 and 2003 while shooting 39.4 and 38.8 percent, respectively. That accomplishment alone should put him first on the list. He was invited to the league's 3-point contest in 2002 despite a career mark in the low 30s; if the goal had been quantity of attempts instead of makes, he might have had a better shot at winning. Somehow, he still got a six-year, $54 million contract in 2005. But he did help in Miami's run to the 2006 title by shooting a career-high 43.5 percent.
2.) Michael Olowakandi
Everyone pretends this never happened, but Olowokandi is probably the most overrated free agent in history. When he was a restricted free agent in the summer of 2002, the Clippers offered him $50 million to stay and were roundly criticized for being too cheap to offer him more. Kandi Man took the qualifier because he was so sure he'd make more money the next summer. Remember, this was coming off a season when he shot 43.3 percent and averaged 11.1 points per game. A year later, Kevin McHale took the bait (of course) and signed him for three years, $16 million, and that was still about five times what he was worth.
3.) Latrell Spreewell

Most Underrated Players

1.) Elton Brand
2.) Shawn Marion
3.) Andre Miller

Is Kwame at #1 worse than Adam Morrison at #3? Kwame at least has lasted 9 years, Morrison is likely gone after this one 4).

Darko Milicic is the absolute worst draft pick of the decade, by far, no contest in my eyes. But if he is, why is Joe Dumars the 2nd best GM of the decade?