With just a 12-man roster, several deserving players are guaranteed to miss the All-Star roster each year. These are the six biggest snubs this season.
Eastern Conference
Pau Gasol: It’s been an ugly season for the Chicago Bulls. The roster doesn’t collectively fit, Fred Hoiberg is a disaster and the team, that previously had championship aspirations, is barely hovering over .500 approaching the All-Star break.
Gasol has suffered at the hands of Hoiberg's variety of funky lineups, causing his production to dip slightly from last season, but still the five-time All-Star has been good on defense and has been efficient on offense. The 35-year-old is averaging a double-double with nearly 17 points and 11 rebounds per game.
Jae Crowder: Realistically, Crowder never had a chance to make the All-Star game. He’s still somewhat of an unknown to the casual NBA fan, despite gaining minor recognition nationwide as the centerpiece to the Rajon Rondo trade last season.
Crowder’s All-Star case is no doubt a fascinating one. His impact on the game isn’t necessarily easy to see with the naked eye, mainly because his true impact is on the defensive end. Crowder ranks 11th in steals per game, tied with Western Conference All-Star Kawhi Leonard, and 12th in defensive win shares. The latter reflects Crowder’s true impact on the defensive end as it factors in all elements of individual defense to produce an estimate of wins added by a singular player.
The small forward is also averaging a career-high in points, field goal percentage, rebounds, assists, blocks and minutes.
David Blatt: Traditionally, the winningest head coach from each conference coaches in the All-Star game. That’s not the case in either conference this season, as San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich will coach the West, due to ineligibility from both Steve Kerr and Luke Walton, and Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue will coach the East.
Lue’s Cavaliers do sit atop the Eastern Conference standings; however, former coach David Blatt was the sitting coach for most of those wins. Thus, Blatt, not Lue, should be coaching the East despite his firing two weeks ago. Inner turmoil aside, Blatt coached the Cavaliers to a 30-11 record and deserves to be rewarded for it.
Western Conference
DeAndre Jordan: Jordan’s All-Star case is a peculiar one because of how limited he is on offense and, more precisely, the soap opera that we know as the Los Angeles Clippers. With alpha dogs like Chris Paul and Blake Griffin playing alongside Jordan, he is often overlooked and underappreciated.
He’s ridiculed for almost exclusively dunking the ball on offense. Meanwhile, Jordan’s leading the league in field goal percentage, topping 70 percent for the second-straight year and averaging over 13 rebounds per game for the third-straight year. Jordan ranks in the top 10 in nearly all major statistical measures of efficiency including true shooting percentage, offensive rating, defensive win shares and defensive rating.
No other near-seven-footer covers as much ground as Jordan on defense and nobody shoots it as efficiently as Jordan.
Dirk Nowitzki: Longevity. What else can you say about Nowitzki? The man is in his 18th year in the NBA, 37-years-old and still willing an otherwise-mediocre Dallas Mavericks team to a likely playoff berth.
Nowitzki’s production has yet to drastically fall off. In fact, his stats per 36 minutes this season are nearly identical to the 2010-11 season when Dallas won the NBA title. This Mavericks team should not be nearing 30 wins midway through the season, but here they are. Also, if Kobe Bryant is getting a legacy bid, then Nowitzki, who’s having the superior season, deserves one too.
Tim Duncan: Speaking of legacies, the 19-year veteran Duncan was left off the All-Star ballot, too. Sure, Duncan’s season averages of about nine points and 7.5 rebounds per game aren’t exactly All-Star caliber. And maybe his 25.9 minutes per game factored into the coaches choice to snub Duncan of his 16th All-Star appearance. But Duncan is the heart and soul of the Spurs and the anchor of the league’s best defense that allows less than 92 points per game.
Unlike Bryant, Duncan hasn’t given the public any indications of when he’ll call it quits, so who knows: This could be the last chance we have to see Duncan in an All-Star game. He may simply retire after this season.
More importantly, the Spurs are the second-best team record-wise in the NBA and should be rewarded with a minimum of three All-Stars, similar to the treatment the Atlanta Hawks roster received last season.