From the confines of my office Thursday night, I received two notifications from the NBA Game Time app (have you pledged appllegiance?) that 14 players had been selected as reserves in the 2015 NBA All-Star game. We’re supposed to scream and shout about which players were snubbed every year, for tradition’s sake, but I mostly agree with the seven chosen reserves in both conferences. More or less, the final 12-man rosters work fine, and specifically the West, which simply has more All-Star worthy players than spots, is as star-studded as we knew it would be.
That isn’t to say I wouldn’t have done things a bit differently. (I’m sort of obligated as someone who writes about the NBA to hold grievances against the All-Star selections and/or process, right?) I believe that Kyle Korver is an All-Star. Why? His true-shooting percentage is 74.4 percent, a figure so outstanding I’d believe any conspiracy you told me about Korver breaking into NBA Stats database and hacking their code, except I’ve witnessed his magic with my own eyeballs. The next four players behind him are Brandan Wright, Tyson Chandler, DeAndre Jordan and Rudy Golbert — the kinds of fee-fi-fo-fums that live atop the FG% categories because their shot of choice occurs roughly 23 feet closer to the basket than Korver’s does. With his jumpers going in the majority of the time, it’s no wonder why professional defenses are handing Atlanta open lay-ups (shots that are worth 2 points) in an effort to swarm Korver whenever he’s so much as standing behind the arc (shots that are worth 3 points). Check out these videos from Zach Lowe’s latest plea for Korver to make the All-Star game:
But unless Dwyane Wade’s on-court production significantly fell off this season, or he missed more games than he played (hold that thought), the East coaches were always going to take Wade over Korver — even when Miami might be one of the least qualified “playoff teams” in recent memory. And it’s not like Atlanta will go unrepresented in the showcase; coaches rewarded the Eastern Conference’s best team with three selections (Paul Millsap, Al Horford, Jeff Teague) after the fans failed to vote any of Atlanta’s starters into the All-Star game.
As luck would have it, though, there is a decent chance Korver will end up on the team after all, now that a nagging hamstring injury will keep Wade out for at least three weeks. Perhaps it will all work out in the East.
Not to repeatedly bludgeon a long-deceased horse, but the West is loaded, and much like how 50 wins won’t guarantee a team makes the playoffs come April, there have been far more than 12 deserving All-Stars in the West this season — they all can’t make it. With that said, it doesn’t soften the blow when you see that DeMarcus Cousins, Damian Lillard and Mike Conley Jr. were left off the 2015 All-Star team. Cousins, the first player in a decade to average 23 points, 12 rebounds and 1.5 blocks, is one of the NBA’s most unique talents — a legitimate monster around the basket who demands a double-team, a bulky wall that swallows up the pick-and-roll, and perhaps the greatest combination of athleticism and mass since Shaq.
Lillard and Conley have many overlaps in their candidacies — starters on elite defensive teams, lethal in the pick-and-roll game, ice water flowing through their veins in the clutch — and their reputations as great (not underrated) point guards talk louder than their numbers. With Cousins, who happens to play for the league’s most WTF franchise — Sacramento — a perennial dweeb out West, his numbers are his candidacy. Those numbers were not enough initially for Cousins to make the team and most believed on Thursday night that Kobe Bryant’s injury replacement spot would end up going to Lillard. There was something like a mock outrage that Lillard wasn’t selected by the coaches; Lillard was the cliche snub — much like 2014 Kyle Lowry and 2013 Steph Curry — that basketball fans were primed and ready to shout in defense of. It led to one of my favorite tweets of the night from Dane Carbaugh of Sporting News.
https://twitter.com/danecarbaugh/status/560955975671492608
The irony is, of course, that Lillard was the cliche snub of 2015. That commissioner Adam Silver selected Cousins over Lillard (and Conley) is fascinating, and not because it was a poor choice, but because it seems like the choice guaranteed to enrage the most people. I have to believe that if Silver had announced Lillard (or Conley) as the replacement for Kobe, there would be less outrage — and perhaps I’m wrong. But the snub outrage around Lillard — who was an All-Star last season and he and his team are noticeably better now than a year ago — is framed as the league continuing to disrespect one of its best talents. Lillard’s entire NBA career — from his no-name status before the draft and the Gerald Wallace trade, to not being selected for the Olympic team last summer, and now this diss from the coaches of the West and Adam Silver — seems to be in spite of so many people overlooking him.
Photo by Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports
But what was Adam Silver supposed to do? If he picks Lillard, most of this press would just become about Conley and how he is routinely disrespected and overlooked. And there would still be questions about what more Boogie could do to make his first All-Star team. (I think we’d also have to have people follow Boogie around the rest of the season, just to… you know… make sure he doesn’t hang around any bridges or ledges of tall buildings the rest of this infuriating, miserable Kings season.)
Again, the West All-Star team was never going to please everybody. Lillard and the many other great players of the West who weren’t selected could make their own JV All-Star team and push the East (if not the West) in a 7-game series:
Starting lineup: Lillard, Conley, Draymond Green, Dirk Nowitzki, DeAndre Jordan
Reserve guards: Monta Ellis, Ty Lawson, Eric Bledsoe
Reserve forwards: Dwight Howard, Tyson Chandler, Kawhi Leonard, Gordon Hayward
Look at that group! The JV team includes a Defensive Player of the Year threat (Green), the NBA’s leading rebounder (Jordan), a pair of first ballot Hall of Famers (Nowitzki, Howard), the leading scorer on a contender (Ellis), the reigning NBA Finals MVP (Leonard), and a trio of players (Lawson, Bledsoe, Hayward) who make the East team on numbers alone.
If you haven’t gathered it yet, I’m pretty firmly in the minority of people who take All-Star selections very, very seriously. In a sport where “Legacy Chatter” is often a more popular spectacle than the action itself, I find it completely backwards that the All-Star team selection process is largely viewed as silly and unimportant — and then we throw around “so-and-so made X All-Star teams…” when we discuss their Hall of Fame resumes. This stuff matters to how we discuss and debate the history of the sport! Lillard not making this team doesn’t change his status as a great point guard, or as a fringe-MVP candidate, but it doesn’t not matter.
The reality is that the selection of Kevin Durant had huge repercussions for Lillard and Conley. Durant, who has played in less than half (21) of Oklahoma City’s games this year, should not be on this team and the NBA should have some legislation on minimum games played in order to be considered for the All-Star team. Would Durant have been selected if he had played only 18 games this year? 15? His numbers are great — although mostly underneath his gargantuan standards — but the Thunder are all over the place and could very well miss the playoffs; the “great team” card cannot be played for Durant this time around.
The fans, who notoriously vote in all-time greats even amidst undeserving years (See: Kobe Bryant), didn’t even vote Durant for the game. That means something!! Hey, West coaches, consider that you selected Durant solely on name recognition and past accomplishments, and remember that when Lillard and Conley are championing two of the elite contenders in all of basketball this spring and the Thunder miss the playoffs. Then live with yourself… (Okay, okay, I won’t go that far.)
Hypothetically, if the coaches selected Lillard over Durant, and Silver was choosing between Boogie and Conley, I wonder which guy would have gotten the spot. Perhaps Silver would have still picked Boogie, and there is nothing wrong with that, but part of me thinks Silver picked Boogie so that he didn’t have to choose between Lillard/Conley — both point guards, roughly of equal skill and accomplishment. With Lillard already on the team, something tells me Silver would have rewarded Conley for transforming himself into a great player in Memphis. As weird as this is considering the daunting number of worthy players, this felt like Conley’s year to make the West: Memphis might never have a better iteration of Grit-N-Grind, and Conley has knocked down the walls of what we thought was his ceiling a few different times now. Boogie will make more All-Star teams, and as disappointing as the “snub” may be for him to swallow, Lillard will too.
But guys like Conley and Korver, who are not just playing some of the most inspiring basketball of their careers, but are two of the most fun players to watch in the whole league, are not often afforded the chance to represent their teams at the All-Star game. The “basketball game” that takes place in New York on Feb. 15 won’t mean much to most of the guys in uniform. Whether or not Conley or Korver really care about playing in the game itself, the acknowledgment of their outstanding work ethic and growth on that stage would be an awesome sentiment.
