Hollinger put out his "All-Improved Teams" today, which are in the same vein as the official Most Improved Player award that gets given out each year.  Here are his picks.

3rd Team:

Mike Conley

Wes Matthews

James Harden

Kris Humphries

Dwight Howard

2nd Team:

Russell Westbrook

Tony Allen

Rudy Gay

Lamar Odom

Lamarcus Aldridge

1st Team:

Derrick Rose

Eric Gordon

Thaddeus Young

Kevin Love

Tyson Chandler

2011 MIP: Darrell Arthur

Wait what?  I thought Hollinger hated Rose and was part of some overarching conspiracy to give him as little credit as possible.  Let's here what he has to say about the man:

 

I've always felt that Rose's case is much stronger for MIP than MVP. The shooting improvement? Legit, and impressive. Rose is up to 33.2 percent on 3s after rarely making them (or even taking them) in his first two seasons, and after shooting in the high 70s from the stripe in his first two seasons, he's at 85.5 percent this year. Rose has also improved defensively, albeit from a low starting point, and has managed to keep his percentages up despite the league's second-highest usage rate.

Well all those things that Hollinger mentioned are pretty obvious to anyone who's paid attention to Rose this year, but it's still praise.  Now to sit back and wait for the comments about how Hollinger is a stat geek who doesn't watch the games and has an agenda against Rose.