If the NBA expanded today, here is the starting five you want
We asked you to pick an NBA expansion team's starting lineup. Here's what you said.
Today is SB Nation NBA Expansion day! We imagined a world where the NBA added two new teams: one in Seattle and one in Virginia Beach.
Each of our 30 team sites protected eight of their own players, casting everyone else aside for our new teams to draft. Then, SB Nation’s Sonics Rising and two of us from SBNation.com drafted two new teams with the remaining players.
But we also wanted to hear from you. As part of these festivities, we asked all of you on social media who you would pick to be in the starting five of your ideal NBA expansion team. Here were the options we presented, taken from the list of players that our 30 team sites left unprotected.
More than 400 of you responded on our Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages, assuming my hand-logged calculations are correct (not a safe assumption).
Here are the results:
The most popular lineup:
PG: George Hill (235 votes)
SG: Tim Hardaway Jr. (136 votes)
SF: Rudy Gay (194 votes)
PF: Kenneth Faried (157 votes)
C: Greg Monroe (173 votes)
The second-most popular lineup:
PG: Derrick Rose (87 votes)
SG: Wesley Matthews (118 votes)
SF: Evan Fournier (123 votes)
PF: Trey Lyles (78 votes)
C: Robin Lopez (132 votes)
The third-most popular lineup:
PG: Tyler Johnson (53 votes)
SG: Lou Williams (117 votes)
SF: DeMarre Carroll (60 votes)
PF: Taj Gibson (74 votes)
C: Pau Gasol (107 votes)
The fourth-most popular lineup:
PG: Brandon Knight (35 votes)
SG: Nick Young (31 votes)
SF: C.J. Miles (46 votes)
PF: Zach Randolph (67 votes)
C: Zaza Pachulia (12 votes)
And, sadly, the least popular lineup of all:
PG: Michael Carter-Williams (28 votes)
SG: Iman Shumpert (28 votes)
SF: Jeff Green (22 votes)
PF: Ryan Anderson (58 votes)
C: Timofey Mozgov (9 votes. Yep. Nine)