Not serious and embarrassing.
These are the two words that came to mind when the NBA announced his Western Conference All-Star reserves on Sunday night, revealing that LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers was on the team while Kawhi Leonard of the LA Clippers was not.
I’ve followed the extremely bad All-Star selections as a sort of side hobby, so I can confidently say that, if that was the will of the Western Conference coaches, this was the most bizarre and indefensible selection of my adult life (a span that spans a greater number of years than I’d like to admit).
Given Leonard’s omission amid the league’s ongoing investigation into the Clippers and former sponsor of the Aspiration teamand taking into account the identity of the player selected in its place, conspiracy theorists will probably have a field day too. However, I suspect the West coaches made this horrible decision on their own, a decision that leaves the league in the bizarre situation of deflecting these conspiracy theories for the next two weeks.
Let’s start by taking the results at face value: yes, this is the worst reserve pick of the century. Perhaps it’s a fitting final salvo for the classic All-Star Game in general. Maybe it’s so unserious that the coaches chose James over Leonard and everyone shrugged their shoulders. (To make matters even more hilarious, James quit the game at the last minute last year after it was too late to select a replacement.)
Typically, the 15 West head coaches submit votes for conference reserves and cannot vote for players on their own team. However, there are no enforceable rules requiring them to take the process seriously or preventing them from outsourcing the work to a communications manager or intern.
The problem isn’t just that Leonard succeeded and James didn’t; it’s the simultaneous juxtaposition of these things.
Leonard has been so good this season that he should have been the first or second name at the top of every poll. He’s having an All-NBA caliber season while leading a woefully thin Clippers roster from the depths of the West standings back into playoff contention. Leonard ranks sixth in the NBA in PER and sixth in BPM. Every player ahead of him on both lists was voted a starter. For good measure, he leads the league in steals and, through Saturday, was a few percentage points away from joining the 50-40-90 club (49.6 percent from the field, 39.5 percent from 3, 93.6 percent from the line). Considering injuries to some other elite players, Leonard was arguably the third most valuable player in the entire conference through the end of January, even with the 13 games he missed.
So it’s not just that James was able to defeat Leonard, it was also James, Devin Booker, Deni Avdija and Jamal Murray. all I managed to defeat Leonard.
Likewise, it’s not just that James made the All-Star team, but that he edged out Leonard. And Alperen Sengün And Julius Randle And James Harden And Rudy Gobert And countless others in the busy West whose performance clearly betters James’ in terms of production and availability.
An All-Star for the 22nd time, James is undoubtedly one of the three greatest players of all time, and he’s probably not third. Even at 41, he remains remarkably efficient, averaging 21.9 points and 6.6 assists per game on 50.2 percent shooting on Sunday. That said, “amazing for 41” is a very different standard than “top 12 player in the Western Conference,” and he doesn’t meet that bar.
James’ efficiency stats pale next to those of most of the conference’s other All-Star candidates, and what’s more, he had only played 992 minutes through Saturday. It’s not like he’s been missed either: the Lakers have a better record when he doesn’t play and have only had a 1.7 point improvement per 100 possessions in his minutes, although almost two-thirds of them have been with Luka Dončić.
If the West coaches truly intended to leave Leonard off the team and put James on it, I think it’s important to note that this is not one headache decision, but two. I never want to hear any of the 13 coaches eligible to vote Leonard over James complain about an All-Star selection vote ever again.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about this process.
Coaches are asked to vote for the top seven players, regardless of position, in order from No. 1 to No. 7. Coaches submit their votes electronically in a system run by accounting firm Ernst & Young, and technically the league doesn’t even see the ballots until after the results are tabulated.
Ernst & Young counts votes according to a points system. The first two players on the ballot get five points, the next two on the list get four points, and the bottom three get three points, two points, and one point, respectively. The seven players with the most total points are the All-Star reserves, and there is a tie-breaking procedure if necessary.
While many people imagine Commissioner Adam Silver somehow using a magic button in his castle at NBA headquarters to bypass this process, it seems extremely unlikely in reality. A more plausible explanation, given the way coaches tend to vote, is that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for two Clippers because of their record (23-25 Monday), and the coaches split their votes between Leonard and Harden in such a way that neither got there.
However, due to Leonard’s absence, we now have an absolutely delightful opportunity in front of us. The league will need to select at least one injury replacement for the All-Star team (for Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks) and perhaps more. Due to the new format of the All-Star Game this year (the “game” is actually a round-robin tournament featuring two American teams and one world team), the league has not yet engaged in an injury replacement selection process. No decision has been announced as to whether an Eastern Conference player should be replaced by another Eastern Conference player, or if an international player should be replaced by another international player, or if anything goes.
We could very well find ourselves in a situation where Silver himself will have to choose whether he chooses Leonard… or not select it… for the event that will take place in the Clippers arena. Awwwwwembarrassing.
This potential move adds one last bit of spice to the All-Star Game as everyone waits for a resolution to the league’s ongoing investigation. And it was all put together by the most terrible All-Star reserve vote in memory.
