NBA All-Star Game 2015: Biggest Snubs and Surprises from Fan Voting
If you can't find a reason to complain about the fan-selected starters for the 2015 NBA All-Star Game, you're just not trying.
The league released the results of fan voting on Jan. 22, and we now know what the people want.
Here's how the final voting shook out:
| West Frontcourt | Anthony Davis | New Orleans Pelicans | 1,369,911 |
| West Frontcourt | Marc Gasol | Memphis Grizzlies | 795,121 |
| West Frontcourt | Blake Griffin | Los Angeles Clippers | 700,615 |
| West Backcourt | Stephen Curry | Golden State Warriors | 1,513,324 |
| West Backcourt | Kobe Bryant | Los Angeles Lakers | 1,152,402 |
| East Frontcourt | LeBron James | Cleveland Cavaliers | 1,470,483 |
| East Frontcourt | Pau Gasol | Chicago Bulls | 974,177 |
| East Frontcourt | Carmelo Anthony | New York Knicks | 647,005 |
| East Backcourt | John Wall | Washington Wizards | 886,368 |
| East Backcourt | Kyle Lowry | Toronto Raptors | 805,290 |
So, with the final tallies in, it's time to run down the biggest snubs and surprises at each of the four designated All-Star positions.
West Frontcourt
Surprise: Marc Gasol
Our first surprise is a pleasant one.
Marc Gasol's best attributes aren't really the kind that draw the attention of the voting public. Or at least we didn't think they were.
As it turns out, voters aren't just interested in high-wire blocks and slithery post moves, neither of which feature in Gasol's game. It seems an appreciation for subtlety has earned Big Spain his first starting nod. Then again, Gasol's spot in the first unit could have something to do with a scoring average that has spiked by nearly five points per game above his previous career high.
Aside from some added aggression on offense, Gasol is mostly the same player who has dominated in obscurity for years. He defensive rotations are still savant-quality, and he continues to do damage from the high post with slick passes and set shots.
Whatever the reason for the public's sudden recognition of Gasol's excellence, let's all just be glad it finally happened.
Viva el oso grande.
Snub: Tim Duncan
What's a guy got to do to get a little recognition?
The answer, it seems, is not "be the best player of a generation, play the most impactful defense of anyone in the league and never, ever age." Because that's exactly what Tim Duncan has done, and yet he didn't get the votes necessary to start.
We are dealing with a grave injustice.
Timmy leads the NBA in defensive real plus-minus by a significant margin, per ESPN.com, and he's actually playing more minutes this season than he has in a half-decade. For my money, a guy on the shortlist for Defensive Player of the Year should be among the three starters up front in his conference—especially if he's chipping in a double-double with 3.2 assists and a pair of blocks per game.
"Duncan isn't merely still decent, or still crafty out there," wrote Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com. "He continues to be great at age 38. He's done the most to keep the Spurs afloat during the time Kawhi Leonard has missed."
The lack of love for Duncan hurts.
West Backcourt
Surprise: Kobe Bryant
It's difficult to term Kobe Bryant's inclusion in the starting lineup a surprise since he has as rabid a following as anyone. Said following senses the end is nigh, which likely helped spur plenty of additional votes.
At the same time, a guy shooting 37.3 percent for a team in lottery limbo doesn't exactly scream "All-Star starter material."
Bryant suffered a torn rotator cuff Wednesday, the Lakers announced Thursday, which likely means his starting spot will wind up being nominal. The team has yet to determine a timetable for his return to the court, but even if surgery and a long time on the shelf aren't in Bryant's future, you'd have to think sitting out the All-Star Game to rest will be.
The fans used their voice to proclaim their affinity for Kobe, and this latest injury may deprive a huge portion of NBA loyalists of what they wanted to see on All-Star Weekend: Bryant, aging and ornery, doing battle with the younger stars of the day.
Still, if there's any silver lining at all in this, it's that a more deserving player (at least on merit) will get the spot he's earned in the starting five.
Snub: James Harden
That player is James Harden, the 1b) to Stephen Curry's 1a) in just about everyone's informal MVP poll at the midseason mark.
Harden has been a monster all year, scoring like mad and propping up a Houston Rockets offense through Dwight Howard's occasional absence and the squad's overall lack of a coherent system. He poured in 45 points on 18 shots on Jan. 19, making him just the fifth player since the 1985-86 season to pile up so many points on so few shots in a regular-season game.
On the year, he's crushing Bryant in every imaginable category:
| Kobe Bryant | 22.3 | 5.6 | 17.5 | 47.7 | 0.1 |
| James Harden | 27.2 | 6.7 | 27.5 | 61.1 | 9.2 |
Yet he wasn't granted a starting nod.
More than likely, he'll get his spot for the opening tip anyway. And he deserves it.
East Frontcourt
Surprise: Carmelo Anthony
This hasn't been Carmelo Anthony's best year. Far from it, actually.
But it's difficult to pin all of the New York Knicks' struggles—their 7-36 record, their franchise-worst losing streak and their sputtering offense—entirely on him.
The guy's out there trying, unwilling to accept the ugly fate assigned to his club this season.
"Having that mindset as a basketball player, as a competitor, it's just hard to do unless you don't care about the game, what happens and your performance," Anthony told reporters following the Knicks' 98-91 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers on Jan. 21. "To say that we're going to go out there and we want to lose a basketball game, I think that's a bad mentality to have."
If you dig around enough, you can find slivers of justification for Anthony as a starter. He ranks 12th in the league in offensive real plus-minus, per ESPN.com, and 19th in player efficiency rating, per Basketball-Reference.com. But you need to parse the data pretty finely to make any semi-serious case for him.
More importantly, you have to ignore the blinking lights and wailing sirens going off around the Atlanta Hawks—the best team in the East and a squad with zero starters in the All-Star Game.
Snub: Al Horford/Paul Millsap
Pick one. It doesn't matter which.
We need some Hawks represented in the starting lineup, and either Horford or Millsap would suffice.
The former, who missed over 50 games with a torn pectoral last year, has rounded into shape after taking some time to find his rhythm. For weeks now, Horford has been anchoring Atlanta's defense at center and serving as a fulcrum for one of the prettiest, most unselfish offenses in the league.
The latter is stretching defenses with his three-point shot, defending power forwards and seemingly turning every 50-50 ball into 90-10 propositions—in his favor.
Neither Horford nor Millsap possesses the kind of glossy points and rebounds averages that we normally associate with All-Stars. But we need to reward the Hawks for their incredible surge to the top of the Eastern Conference, and if all it takes is acknowledging one of these deserving candidates at the expense of Anthony, it's a shame voters couldn't get the job done.
East Backcourt
Surprise: Kyrie Irving Slips
Last year, Kyrie Irving started the All-Star Game after garnering over 860,000 votes. This year, he's producing very similar individual stats (with upticks in both field-goal and three-point accuracy) for a team that actually wins more than it loses.
And he slipped all the way to fourth among East guards with 535,873 votes.
That's a little odd, isn't it?
Two explanations present themselves: Either the voting public realized a year too late that Irving's individual numbers and refusal to defend mark him as something less than a star or that same group is coming around to the value of the better East backcourt options.
Snub: None
The temptation to devote this section to Jeff Teague is hard to resist. Almost everything mentioned about Horford and Millsap applies to him, and you'd hear no argument here if Teague had somehow earned a starting nod.
But we've devoted enough time to Hawks-centric injustice, so we'll turn our attention elsewhere.
There's a decent case to be made for Dwyane Wade here. Kyle Lowry overtaking him was the only change in the voting results from the last release on Jan. 8, and it's probably for the best that the Toronto Raptors point guard earned the nod.
He's played 10 more games than Wade, runs a superior team and turned in a strong performance without DeMar DeRozan.
Wade has quietly had an excellent year with arguably less help from his supporting cast than Lowry has received. And he tops Lowry in some key efficiency measures, including PER and true shooting percentage. The Raptors' recent slide has coincided with their terrible perimeter defense, and Lowry gets demerits for that.
Still, after getting left off last year's roster entirely, Lowry earned this.
Besides, it's nice to end things on a diplomatic note. Let's save the real outrage for when the reserves are announced next week.
*Special thanks to Adam Fromal for the infographics.
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