Conference-Less NBA All-Stars

Hoops Hypotheticals
6 min readNov 24, 2023

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In the most recent post, I wrapped up the NBA All-Star audit with a review of the data resulting from the exercise but pondered about how the largely unnecessary Conference format resulted in many deserving All-Stars still missing out on selection. To reiterate:

There were several instances throughout this exercise where a player with only a few All-NBA votes still made it on to their Conference’s hypothetical All-Star Team just because we had to fill out the twelve-man roster, despite there being a player or players from the opposite Conference with far more All-NBA votes who still couldn’t crack their hypothetical All-Star Team due to lack of space. The most obvious example is 2015, when Kawhi Leonard collected 155 All-NBA votes and still missed the West hypothetical All-Star Team, but Kyle Korver collected 2 All-NBA votes, DeMar DeRozan collected 3, and Nikola Vucevic collected 6, and all three made it on to the East hypothetical All-Star Team.

This leads to a very simple hypothetical:

  • Hypothetical — What if the All-Star team disregarded Conferences and instead recognized the 24 best overall players?

The structure of this hypothetical will maintain the end-of-season perspective and utilize All-NBA voting to identify the players whom the voters felt had the best overall season. It will also maintain the positional structures of each season. As a reminder, this only covers the 1985–86 season onward, as that is the earliest season in which full All-NBA award voting results are available on basketball-reference.com.

Unlike the last series, I won’t do a season-by-season breakdown and will instead focus only on the overall impact that this change would have on particular players and historical records. Similar to the last recap article, I’ll begin by focusing on players who added at least two All-Star appearances to their resumes, before shifting to cover players who lost at least two All-Star appearances, and closing with a review of changes to the list of players with the most overall selections.

Four Added All-Star Appearances (+4)

Kevin Johnson, Dennis Rodman, John Stockton, Buck Williams

  • Johnson, Rodman, and Stockton all gained four additional All-Star spots in the last hypothetical and impressively manage to retain all four spots in this Conference-less iteration, further boosting each of their arguments for the title of most-snubbed player ever. Meanwhile, Buck Williams had added just two All-Star appearances in the last hypothetical but boosts that total to four when Conferences are not considered. Interestingly, his two additional All-Star appearances in the last hypothetical came in 1987 and 1988 when he was with the Nets and putting up strong individual numbers, but the two extra selections in the Conference-less version came in 1990 and 1991 when he had shifted to a rugged defense-and-rebounding role player for the Blazers. This shift obviously didn’t impact his massive respect around the league, as he still garnered plenty of All-NBA attention in those seasons.

Three Added All-Star Appearances (+3)

Marcus Camby, Rudy Gobert, Al Jefferson, DeAndre Jordan, Karl Malone, Stephon Marbury, Zach Randolph, Rod Strickland

  • Zach Randolph is a huge winner here. In the last hypothetical, he surprisingly lost one All-Star appearance due to the crowded competition from other West big men. And yet, incredibly, when Conferences are disregarded, Randolph not only retains the All-Star spot he lost in the last hypothetical but gains three additional ones. It makes sense, as Z-Bo always posted great numbers for good teams, but often found himself missing out on All-Star Teams behind players with equally impressive for teams that were as good or better like Durant, Dirk, Pau, Aldridge, Love, Duncan, Blake, Draymond, Kawhi, and AD, while inferior players from the East grabbed All-Star spots. It’s good to see that rectified a bit here.

Two Added All-Star Appearances (+2)

Andrew Bogut, Terry Cummings, Vlade Divac, Tim Duncan, Dale Ellis, Jason Kidd, Kawhi Leonard, Reggie Miller, Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl-Anthony Towns, Russell Westbrook, Hassan Whiteside

  • Everyone in this group had collected at least one additional All-Star appearance in the last hypothetical with the exception of Vlade Divac, who did not gain any All-Star appearances last time around, so this group is largely unchanged.

Two Rescinded All-Star Appearances (-2)

Otis Birdsong, Caron Butler, Tom Chambers, Brad Daugherty, Luol Deng, Kevin Duckworth, Julius Erving, Johnny Green, Rip Hamilton, Roy Hibbert, Grant Hill, Eddie Jones, Michael Jordan, Bill Laimbeer, Bob Lanier, Zach LaVine, Kevin Love, Dan Majerle, Paul Millsap, Dikembe Mutombo, Jermaine O’Neal, Glenn Robinson, Latrell Sprewell, Isiah Thomas, John Wall, James Worthy

  • The toughest breaks here belong to Caron Butler, Luol Deng, Kevin Duckworth, Roy Hibbert, Zach LaVine, and Glenn Robinson, all of whom made two All-Star appearances in real life but lost both in this hypothetical. Deng, Duckworth, and LaVine also lost both selections in the last hypothetical, indicating that their real-life selections may have benefited from a lack of strong competition in terms of both position and Conference.

Three Rescinded All-Star Appearances (-3)

Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter, Kyrie Irving, Allen Iverson, Kyle Lowry, Alvin Robertson, Kemba Walker

  • I covered the reasons for Kobe’s and AI’s vacated All-Star selections in the last post, so I’ll focus on the remaining big-name player in this category in Kyrie Irving. Irving’s omissions are interesting, as he loses selections in 2013, 2014, and 2023. The last of that group makes sense because of Kyrie’s Twitter post and subsequent suspension following the 2023 All-Star Game. The other two are less understandable though, as he posted strong individual numbers in both campaigns. His teams were bad both years and he played in just 59 games in 2013, so perhaps those were enough to tip the balance in favor of other strong guards in those seasons, as none of the guards who finished ahead of him in All-NBA voting in either of those seasons were undeserving.

Four or More Rescinded All-Star Appearances

Joe Johnson (-4), Ray Allen (-5), Dwyane Wade (-5), Chris Bosh (-6)

  • I’m grouping these players together because they’re all big names, they’re all from roughly the same era, and they all enjoyed most or all of their success in the Eastern Conference. I covered Allen and Bosh a bit in the last article and I’m not too surprised to see that neither of them improved their spots this time around. Joe Johnson also wasn’t too surprising because I recall several of his real-life selections being questioned at the time. Dwyane Wade’s appearance here is jarring though. He lost two selections in the last hypothetical, and that felt reasonable given the amount of time he missed due to injuries over the years, but losing five in a Conference-less All-Star format seems absurd to me. The specific years in which Wade loses out in this hypothetical are 2008, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2019. The last of that group was an honorary selection at the end of his career so it’s not shocking to see that go away. He missed huge chunks of time in 2008 and 2014, so perhaps those are reasonable as well. And he posted good-but-not-great numbers in 2015 and 2016, so perhaps those selections were boosted by his reputation. Still, put all these together and it’s wild to see him lose five.

I should also point out five players who never made an All-Star Team in real life or in the previous hypothetical but did earn one in the Conference-less hypothetical: Clint Capela, Danilo Gallinari, Jim Jackson, Ty Lawson, and Byron Scott.

Lastly, here’s a reminder of what the actual all-time All-Star leaderboard looks like:

19 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, LeBron James
18 — Kobe Bryant
15 — Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Shaquille O’Neal
14 — Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, Dirk Nowitzki, Jerry West
13 — Wilt Chamberlain, Bob Cousy, Kevin Durant, John Havlicek, Dwyane Wade
12 — Larry Bird, Elvin Hayes, Magic Johnson, Moses Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Chris Paul, Oscar Robertson, Dolph Schayes, Isiah Thomas

And here’s what the new leaderboard would look like following the Conference-less All-Star audit:

20— LeBron James
19 — None
18 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
17— Tim Duncan, Karl Malone
16 — Shaquille O’Neal
15— Kobe Bryant
14 — Kevin Garnett, Hakeem Olajuwon, John Stockton
12 — Wilt Chamberlain, Bob Cousy, Kevin Durant, Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Paul, Jerry West
12 — Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, John Havlicek, Michael Jordan, Jason Kidd, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, Dolph Schayes

LeBron sits alone atop this leaderboard and he’s probably going to add another All-Star selection to his resume later this year given how well he’s looked at the start of the season as of this writing. Duncan, Malone, and Shaq also climb the leaderboard a bit here while Kobe falls to 15 total selections.

That’ll do it for this week’s article. It’s a bit briefer and less detailed than usual, but we’ll be diving back into a much more thorough hypothetical beginning next week.

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