The NBA on Thursday afternoon released their three All-NBA team’s for this past regular season that featured many of the league’s biggest stars earning the prestigious honor.
However, there were several notable players left off the list such as Kyrie Irving, who has just one All-NBA Third Team selection in his career. In light of that, Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue told Marla Ridenour of The Akron Beacon Journal that he is shocked that the All-Star guard didn’t receive enough votes to make any of the three teams.
“Yeah, very surprised. Just because of the year he’s had and all the injuries that we had, him and LeBron carried this team for most of the season with Kevin and J.R. being out. I thought it was a tough decision, but just part of how things go,” Lue said before Friday morning’s shootaround.
Irving is coming off arguably his most productive regular season where he averaged career highs with 25.2 points on 47.3 percent shooting from the field along with 5.8 assists, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.2 steals per game.
Since the arrival of LeBron James, Irving has continued to take his game to greater heights. This was quite evident last season as he became a more effective and efficient scorer seeing significant rises in his several offensive numbers from last year jumping up 5.6 points along with his field goal percentage from 44.8 to 47.3 and 3-point percentage from 32.1 to 40.1.
Despite his drastic improvement, it wasn’t enough for him to earn a nod over any of the six guards selected ahead of him in Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Stephen Curry, DeMar DeRozan, John Wall, and Isaiah Thomas. Each of these players in their own right had strong seasons that only made it hard for the media voting to push any of them off the list.
It wasn’t just Irving that was notably left off as Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson didn’t make it either. Simply put, there are not enough spots on the teams to match the number of extremely talent players in the league.