Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein

From the Dallas Mavericks championship celebration at the American Airlines Center:

First of all, I never expected to play on this team after playing against this team for so many years.  I just want to thank my teammates, thank the coaching staff, thank the ownership for the opportunity they gave me this year to compete again.  And it was special.  Playing for the championship and winning in the end, it’s the best moment in my career.  I just want to thank all of you guys for your love and support  – it’s been an unbelievable year.

Listen to Peja from the celebration below:

No flash? Click here to download or play.

Steven Chea/CK

NBA All-Rookie squads were announced today and DeMarcus Cousins made the cut.  The Kings big man becomes the 10th player in franchise history selected to the league’s rookie first team.

Bold – Rookie of the Year

Steven Chea/CK

DeMarcus Cousins finished third in this year’s Rookie of the Year race, behind John Wall and award winner Blake Griffin.  Only six players received votes.  Here’s how the voting broke down:

The Bee’s Jason Jones voted Griffin first, Cousins second and Wall third.

Voting numbers via the Sac Bee.

By now, you probably know Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry and Jeff Green are joining the roster pool for Team USA. This now makes Tyreke one of 31 players eligible to represent his country in the most prestigious international basketball competitions over the next decade or more, assuming he doesn’t get much worse as a basketball player.

Here are the Team USA head coach Mike Krzyzewski and Team USA managing director Jerry Colangelo talking about the 2010 NBA Rookie of the Year:

First of all, to have someone like Coach K say that Tyreke Evans has already earned this honor at the age of 20 is a HUGE compliment. HUGE.

Secondly, I believe Jerry Colangelo when he talks about how this experience will make Tyreke a better player. Since the inception of this new direction of the Team USA concept and program, the guys that seem to go into these camps and play with all of the top players in an intimate environment like this have learned how to become much better players. Along with their normal rate of progress, you can see players like Deron Williams, Chris Paul, and even LeBron James and how they improved greatly after this experience.

It’s unlikely that Evans can actually make Team USA this summer for the 2010 World Championships in Turkey. However, the experience of the Team USA camps will teach him how to be a better pro, a better leader and a better player. With the hard work that he’s clearly willing to do, this can only accelerate the growth process of only the fourth 20-5-5 rookie in NBA history.

Here is the roster breakdown for the 31 players currently in the roster pool:

Guards: Chauncey Billups, Kobe Bryant, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry, Eric Gordon, OJ Mayo, Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, Russell Westbrook, Deron Williams
Forwards: Carmelo Anthony, Carlos Boozer, Chris Bosh, Kevin Durant, Rudy Gay, Danny Granger, Jeff Green, Andre Iguodala, LeBron James, David Lee, Kevin Love, Lamar Odom, Tayshaun Prince, Gerald Wallace
Centers: LaMarcus Aldridge, Dwight Howard, Al Jefferson, Brook Lopez, Kendrick Perkins, Amare Stoudemire

Big ups to Kingsflix for the videos.

As Tom Ziller reported earlier Tuesday, Tyreke Evans will be named the 2010 Rookie of the Year. I didn’t want to post anything involving Tom’s breaking news until I could verify it myself (not a knock on Tom… just my own paranoia about this stuff) but sources have confirmed the story from Sactown Royalty is true. A press conference for Thursday is believed to be when the news will be officially announced by the team.

(Update: Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee is also confirming the news)

While having some very serious competition throughout the season from guys like Stephen Curry and Brandon Jennings, Tyreke was the only rookie that exhibited brilliance over the course of the entire season. He showed flashes as early as the second game of the season when he went toe-to-toe with Chris Paul and left with the All-Star’s complete respect. Then he took control of the franchise as the third youngest player in the NBA from the sixth game of the season until the final game.

Over the course of this season, he took on the opposing team’s best perimeter defender every night for the entire campaign and still ended up being the fourth player in NBA history to average 20 points, five rebounds, and five assists in a rookie season. To top that off, he showed the ability to develop into an elite defender one day with his size, quickness and go-go gadget wingspan.

Congratulations to Tyreke Evans and the Sacramento Kings for having the best rookie of the 2009-2010 NBA season.

Saw this tweet from John Hollinger late Monday night/early Tuesday morning about Jamal Crawford being announced as the Sixth Man of the Year:

So perhaps this means that the Rookie of the Year award will be given out Wednesday. There aren’t too many awards left and I doubt they’d give out ROY after MVP is announced.

Of course, nobody can give you an answer or a schedule for these awards because it’s much more fun to torture people.

By the way, that reminds me: how do you keep a blogger in suspense?

With Awards Season coming this week (Dwight Howard won DPOY today) and throughout, the TrueHoop Network thought it would be a fun idea to vote on the same awards and see how the network gauged the 2009-2010 regular season.

You can see the winners here on TrueHoop. Big ups to Dan Feldman of Pistons Powered for getting this together.

Here is how I voted:

MVP
1. LeBron James
2. Kevin Durant
3. Kobe Bryant
4. Dwight Howard
5. Dwyane Wade

Explanation: Pretty self-explanatory for why LeBron is number one here. I picked Durant over the rest for second because Dwight Howard wasn’t good enough offensively the first two months, Kobe was bad the last month or two and Dwyane Wade just wasn’t as spectacular in my opinion.

ROY
1. Tyreke Evans (Who was damn near unanimous)
2. Stephen Curry
3. Brandon Jennings

Explanation: Unlike some pundits and team fans, I’ve been watching the ENTIRE season. It’s still a season long award, right?

COY
1. Nate McMillan
2. Scott Brooks
3. Scott Skiles

Explanation: Nate McMillan had more than 300 games missed to injury, had to play Juwan Howard way too much and still won 50 games in the West. Hard to go against him even with how great the turnarounds were in OKC and Milwaukee.

DPOY
1. Josh Smith
2. Dwight Howard
3. Andrew Bogut

Explanation: The reason I didn’t pick Dwight is because Josh Smith is not only a game-changer around the basket but he’s also a pretty good perimeter defender. I understand the argument for Howard and don’t disagree with it per se but for me, I’ll take the more versatile defender.

MIP
1. Kevin Durant
2. Joakim Noah
3. Russell Westbrook

Explanation: Durant went from a really good player to being an offensive apocalypse. I don’t really see how this one could even be close.

Sixth Man
1. Jamal Crawford
2. Anderson Varejao
3. Jason Terry

Explanation: I love what Anderson Varejao does for his team but I think Jamal Crawford has done a better job of getting his team to the next level. Is Jamal the better player? Probably not when you factor in defense. But Jamal has made a bigger impact off the bench.

Executive of the Year
1. John Hammond, Milwaukee
2. Sam Presti, OKC
3. Daryl Morey, Houston

Explanation: Every player on this team has been brought in to fill a specific role. It’s pretty incredible that all of these moves have worked out as well as they have. John Hammond has turned a bad team into a dangerous playoff team (well, before Andrew Bogut turned his arm into a wet noodle).

All NBA 1st Team
G: Dwyane Wade
G: Kobe Bryant
F: LeBron James
F: Kevin Durant
C: Dwight Howard

All NBA 2nd Team
G: Steve Nash
G: Deron Williams
F: Carmelo Anthony
F: Dirk Nowitzki
C: Andrew Bogut

All NBA 3rd Team
G: Rajon Rondo
G: Brandon Roy
F: Josh Smith
F: Chris Bosh
C: Tim Duncan

All Defensive 1st Team
G: Rajon Rondo
G: Thabo Sefolosha
F: Gerald Wallace
F: Josh Smith
C: Dwight Howard

All Defensive 2nd Team
G:Dwyane Wade
G: Nicolas Batum
F: Luc Richard Mbah a Moute
F: Anderson Varejao
C: Andrew Bogut

All Rookie 1st Team
Tyreke Evans
Stephen Curry
Brandon Jennings
Jonas Jerebko
DeJuan Blair

All Rookie 2nd Team
Darren Collison
Marcus Thornton
Ty Lawson
Wesley Matthews
James Harden

April 14^th has been dubbed “Unsung Player Day” across the internet thanks to our friend Don from the With Malice blog.

It’s pretty self-explanatory too. There’s a lot of coverage given to LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Kevin Durant, Dwyane Wade and others around the league. And it’s deserving too. Those are the stars of the NBA. But there are plenty of players who do quite a bit and hardly ever get recognized.

I decided to nominate Donté Greene for this site’s Unsung Player post. Normally, we’re supposed to nominate guys that don’t play more than 10 minutes per game but still find a way to contribute to the greatness of this league. I could have easily just gone and picked Jon Brockman to be the Unsung Player because he fits into this criteria more than Greene. But I want to bend the rules quite a bit and recognize a guy that matured from his rookie season to his sophomore season in a way that few expected. Donté Greene has made such a huge change in just one season that I feel he needs to be recognized. I know it’s outside of the guidelines but for the Kings, I felt Donté was the only choice.

Donté Greene was an intriguing prospect out of Syracuse. He’s built in that Tim Thomas frame of a tall, lanky shooter who is extremely athletic and capable of doing anything he wants on the court. But luckily for Donté he has a much better attitude and self-awareness about the game of basketball and where he fits in than Tim Thomas ever did.

After nearly setting the Las Vegas Summer League on fire with a 40-point game for the Houston Rockets, he was eventually traded here to the Kings for Ron Artest. There were other pieces to the deal involved but none as important as Donté. When he got here, he had to deal with a coach on his way out who had no business being in charge and then an assistant coach who was completely overmatched and had no business being in charge. Lost in all of that chaos was a wasted rookie season for Greene.

He looked completely lost on both ends of the floor and looked to be either a bust of a first round pick or a reclamation project that would be far more work than production yielded.

However, this season was a huge sign that neither of those seemingly worst-case scenarios were going to be true. The Show (as Sactown Royalty has properly dubbed him) came to this team and its new regime ready to play and ready to earn whatever came his way. In his rookie season, we saw an unsure shooter that didn’t know when to let it fly or when to move the ball. That wasn’t a problem in year two of his career. He was confident in his jumper and proved to be able to swing a game with timely shots.

But most importantly for Donté was the way he earned his way onto the court and into the starting lineup – with his defense. He didn’t seem like he was capable of being a competent defender during his rookie season. So he dedicated himself to the defensive side of the ball in the off-season and learned how to use his athletic ability and quickness to slow the game down. Now? He’s often guarding the best wing scorer on the opposing team.

That doesn’t just happen in one year for most guys and for some guys, it never happens. It showed maturity in a young player. It showed that some guys are willing to work for their success in this league even after they’ve made it with a guaranteed contract. He improved nearly every aspect of his game but made sure to improve the one that gets the least publicity or reward – defense.

Now Donté looks like he can be an elite defender in this league along with a timely shooter and a regular starter. He still has a lot of improvements to make across his skill set but he proved in a short time that he’s willing to work at it.

That’s why he’s Cowbell Kingdom’s Unsung Player today.

The ESPN analysts have voted for their choice on Rookie of the Year and Tyreke Evans got a whopping 14 out of 20 votes for the award.

I’ve discussed this before and I’ll say it one more time. I think it’s stupid that people have to lobby for awards in the NBA.

Especially when that someone (Tyreke Evans) has been the runaway candidate for Rookie of the Year. I guess history by a rookie is questioned by some when the competition for the award is a point guard who had an embarrassing shooting stretch over the course of three (!) months and the other is a player who has put up numbers almost as impressive as Tyreke’s numbers, only for two fewer months.

Regardless, Tyreke Evans’ ROY campaign has been going on for the past few weeks and now is really getting going with the guys from Dude Perfect joining forces with Evans.

(H/T – Trey Kerby at BDL)

This was my favorite video because you got to see some of the personality that Tyreke has, which he rarely shows. He’s so about business and getting the job done that it’s nice to see him cut loose a little bit. Hopefully as the Kings get better over the next couple years, we’ll see more of this side of him.

All in all, there are six videos with trick shots. You should definitely check them out and check out StandWithReke.com. Lots of good, fun stuff going on with this Rookie of the Year campaign.