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I usually don't pay too much attention to the All-NBA Team selections each season, but one pick really stood out for me as a case of a player seeming to get votes based on reputation rather than actual performance. To see if I'm just being biased, I compared the 15 All-NBA players based on Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and Roland Rating (the difference between his team's net points per 48 minutes when he's on the court, and his team's net points per 48 minutes when he's off the court) to see if their production fit their reputations.
I also included each player's Roland Rating rank for his team to give a sense of his relative importance to that team. It's not an exact science, obviously, but since most of the players perceived to be the most valuable to their teams tend to also have their teams highest Roland Rating, I think it has some merit.
As you might have deduced by looking at the number, I don't think Paul Pierce belongs on the Second Team. You could also make a case that Chris Paul deserves Kobe's guard spot on the first team, but since he's the best player on the team with the best record in the Western Conference, I can't quarrel with that too much.
Celtics fans would surely counter that Pierce deserves to be on the Second Team because he had to lead the team for 25 games while Kevin Garnett was injured. They'd also point out that Pierce was the guy who had to take the clutch shots late in the game.
There's no denying that Pierce was one of the top players in the league in "clutch scoring" (4th quarter or overtime, less than 5 minutes left, neither team ahead by more than 5 points) this season. He was ninth in the league with 39.1 points per 48 minutes of clutch time and shot .451 from the field and .467 from three-point land in those minutes.
However, the two third team forwards weren't exactly slouches in those areas. Pau Gasol wasn't the Lakers go-to guy in the clutch so he only scored 29.5 points per 48 clutch minutes, but he was incredibly efficient with a .634 shooting percentage in those minutes. And then there's Carmelo Anthony, who was easily the best clutch scorer in the NBA this season — scoring 54.4 points per 48 clutch minutes, shooting .565 from the field and .583 on three-pointers.
I'm not denying that Paul Pierce is a great player or that he was a key reason to his team's continued success, but his spot should have gone to either Gasol or Anthony. Pierce got the nod over them because he plays for the defending champion Celtics, and too many of the 122 sportswriters and broadcasters who cast these votes are not knowledgable enough to check the numbers to see if their perception matches reality.
Speaking of those voters, one of them gave a third-team vote to Andre Miller while another gave a third-team vote to Jermaine O'Neal. The Miller vote obviously came from a Philly representative. As for the J.O. vote... well, I have my suspicions about who cast that vote. Are you thinking who I'm thinking? 
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