Deciding who might be considered an all-star snub is fraught with could haves and should haves, but it seems hard to believe Damian Lillard is not worthy of a place in the showcase.
The Portland Trail Blazers guard is probably the most egregious “snub” this season, passed over by Kobe Bryant due to to the vagaries of fan voting and, a bit more perplexingly, Russell Westbrook, who has been excellent but missed a decent chunk of time to injury.
Lillard has been a top-10 player by most advanced statistics but suffers from playing the same position in the same conference as Stephen Curry, James Harden and Chris Paul, as well as Westbrook and the popular-as-ever Bryant.
The latter will not play, as he convalesces from rotator cuff surgery, and has been replaced not by another guard but by the Sacramento Kings centre DeMarcus Cousins.
Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference, players like Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, who play for an under-performing Miami Heat team, have been selected, almost by default, to play in the February 15 game at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
The disparity in the NBA’s East and West fuels the capriciousness of all-star honours. A player like Wade, who remains elite offensively but whose overall value is hindered by waning defensive effectiveness, will be on display in a game meant to highlight the league’s top talents. It is a cruel fate for a player who has been the engine at the heart of the fourth-best team in the hyper-competitve West.
Lillard told NBA.com: “I’m definitely going to take it personal. I just felt disrespected. I play the game the right way … I think what an all-star represents in this league … I think I make up all those things.”
His argument is convincing. Lillard is a lethal offensive player, and a crucial one.
Portland’s scoring (107.2 points per 100 possessions when he is on the court) falls apart without him (to 96.4 points per 100).
He is a good, if not great, defender for the league’s fifth-best overall defence by points per 100, handed the impossible nightly task of guarding contemporaries like Curry and Paul and other Western Conference point guards like Mike Conley and Westbrook.
His usage rate (the percentage of a team’s possessions a player finishes when he is on the court) is a career high 26.6 per cent even as his assist percentage (the ratio of teammates’ made shots a player’s passes create) is a team-leading 28.5 per cent.
He has his flaws, including a too-low 42.8 shooting percentage, but he also does unappreciated things like draw fouls better than Paul or Curry while making a high percentage of those free throws.
But the fans, well, they love Kobe.
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