Somehow, when the league named its all-defensive team on Wednesday, Tyson Chandler was on the second team.

Why is that shocking or weird in any way? Well the guy was named the league’s defensive player of the year earlier this month. So, Chandler is good enough to be picked out as the league’s best on defence, yet doesn’t make the starting five.

How can a panel of the league’s 30 coaches screw that up?

Apparently they felt the need to reward Dwight Howard – a man who single-handedly dismantled the Orlando Magic – the team he plays for!

How could the coaches vote for a guy who poisoned his own club and reportedly went to management to get Stan Van Gundy – his own coach – fired? What Howard did was despicable and the last thing he deserves is kudos.

So, with one announcement of an all-NBA team, we get two terrible outcomes: Howard makes his fourth consecutive all-defensive team and the league’s best defender gets completely shafted.

The NBA: It’s FAN-tastic.

Now back to these two brutal Eastern Conference semifinal. The Western champ is going to have it easy in the final…

So who were this year’s athletes and teams that stood out?

-It’s fairly obvious for anyone to see that soccer is the sport is the highest paying team sport. Out of the teams with the top 10 average weekly pay, seven were European soccer clubs. Helped by the fact that there will never be a salary cap in such a global game, most of the teams also increased over last year’s numbers. Barcelona’s average salaries went up 10% to almost $8.7 million a year. Manchester City’s average salary went up an astounding 26%, moving them from 10^th to third overall.

-Despite Barcelona having the highest average salaries, super-duperstar Lionel Messi isn’t the highest-paid Argentine. That title belongs to Sergio Aguero, who transferred to City during the summer. He’ll pull down a cool $16.6 million this year.

-Think a soccer player is England’s top paid athlete? Will guess again. It’s actually boxer David Haye, who remarkably made more than $24 million for one fight with Wladimir Klitschko. Simply stunning.

-Spain’s top paid athlete isn’t a footballer either, it’s F-1’s Fernando Alonso, who made a mind-boggling $40 million in 2011. Even more astounding is that the F-1 champion Sebastien Vettel wasn’t Germany’s top earner, losing out to Dirk Nowitzki at $19 million.

-But if you thought that was outstanding, Italy’s highest-paid athlete races on two wheels. Valentino Rossi, a Moto GP racer for Ducati made $20 million to top that country’s chart.

-Then there’s the sad state of Canada’s athletes, being topped by Jason Bay’s albatross of a contract. At least Joey Votto, a more respectable player will top this list soon.

-The NFL’s highest paid player wasn’t anybody you would expect it to be. Not a pretty boy QB like Tom Brady, not a diva receiver like Megatron and not a star running back like Adrian Peterson. It was Charles Johnson, who thanks to a massive signing bonus and front-loaded deal, made $34 million from the Carolina Panthers last year.

-Have you ever wondered how much fringe sport stars make compared to their mainstream brethren? Well look no further. Sean Rash made $140K in bowling prizes, Phil Taylor made nearly a million in darts. Joey Chestnut won $205K in Major League Eating, a quarter as much as Emmanuel Mutai made in distance running prizes ($815K). The lowest top dog made only $50,400, but also got a truck for his troubles; it was Dallas Seavey, winning of the Iditarod.

But the fact remains that while the Wildcats have at least four guys that will likely be taken in the first round of this year’s draft, the rest of the roster would just not compare to an NBA squad. So that’s four NBA-calibre guys facing a roster full of NBA-calbre players.

Heck, one Las Vegas bookie even went as far as to set a line as if this game could ever happen. If the Washington Wizards were to face Kentucky on a neutral court, the Wiz would be favoured by 30 points. Granted, I’d love to take the points, but the fact is that Washington isn’t going to lose that game.

So, the better question that I would pose is this: How would Kentucky fare if it played in the NBA Development League?

Tricky question, right?

Right off the bat you could argue that the ‘Cats would have the two best players on the floor with Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. With their four first-round calibre guys, you could argue that the ’Cats might even have the best four players out there. How many lottery picks ever play in the NBDL? The only high draft pick that I can remember being sent down is Hasheem Thabeet and he’s still kind of garbage.

The NBDL is a league of gunners too; guys that are trying to impress NBA teams with their numbers. I wouldn’t expect a group of guys making less than you or I to be interested in playing as a team. I’ve never watched a D-League game, but I can only assume by the mostly high scores that it’s more akin to rec-league ball than a shutdown defensive affair.

There are two spots that a NBDL team would have an advantage: Their depth and the rules. We would of course have to play with NBA rules, meaning that there would be the longer three-point line and different defensive schemes. This would hurt Kentucky’s chances, but I believe their overall defence is strong enough to get through that difficulty. The game would also be longer, so stamina may become an issue for UK.

In terms of depth, the NBDL team’s bench players would most likely be better than Kentucky’s. In the D League, the bench guys would still probably be past second-round picks and the best of the undrafted players. It would be silly to think that this entire Kentucky team will be drafted one day. I doubt their ninth man is going to make the NBDL even as a walk-on.

So, could the Kentucky Wildcats hang with the Los Angeles D-Fenders or the Fort Wayne Mad Ants? I believe so and I wouldn’t bet against John Calipari’s crew. But come on, let’s just put to bed this silly ‘Kentucky could play in the NBA’ nonsense – even after they win the title tonight.

Usually an offensive juggernaut – and they’re no slouches on that end this year either – this team is built around an amazing ability to protect the paint. Anthony Davis alone averages almost five blocks a game.

These kids block shots like they’re playing NBA Jam with goaltending turned off.

They also sport two guys that will likely be selected in the top-five of this year’s NBA draft – maybe even as the top two. Along with Davis, the consensus No. 1 overall pick, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has ridiculous talent as well. Then there’s still Terrence Jones, who stayed in school last year – a Kentucky rarity.

Many will say that they bowed out of last year’s tourney in Final Four and could do it again, but that feels unlikely. Their opponent’s this year (Louisville) do not matchup to the team that defeated the Wildcats last year, the eventual champions, UConn.

There’s no Kemba Walker-level player to lead the Cardinals to the shock upset. It will even be questionable if Louisville can hold a lead against Kentucky. Shockingly, in this entire tournament the most that Kentucky has trailed by is five points. Now that’s amazing.

OK, that first sentence has two technically incorrect facts: First, we’ve already played four games in the tournament, but the only people that care about the First Four are people from the schools involved and gamblers. Second, the winner of this all may not in fact be the best team in the States; they’re really just the ones that one those six games in a row.

So what do we think will happen? Let’s make a few quick picks.

-Big upsets first-round upset: New Mexico State over Indiana, Belmont over Georgetown, NC State over San Diego State

-Potential future upsets: Vanderbilt over Syracuse, Marquette over MSU.

-Potential bracket busters: UConn, St. Bonnaventure, Kansas State.

-Region winners: Kentucky, Marquette, Florida State and North Carolina.

-Tournament winner: Kentucky

-MVP: Anthony Davis and his one eyebrow.

I’ll be tweeting all Thursday and Friday while watching the “first-round” matchups, so if you want to follow along, chat and make some predictions, follow me @danbilicki