The NBA Needs to Expand the All-Star Game
In lieu of what has been one of the most stacked All-Star ballots, I decided to delve into the problem with so many ‘snubs’ missing out on worthy All-Star nominations this year. When I first considered the prospect of expanding the All-Star Game, it naturally went against my better judgement. Throughout NBA history, we’ve seen countless sentimental All-Star nominations and charitable awards handed out. As a casual NBA historian, I pride myself on making these travesties known.
These historical awards matter, both in the short term for contract bonuses and in a broader contextual perspective. So as much I like to clown talking heads opining who the GGOAT (Greatest GOAT of All Time) is, technical awards aren’t strictly a fabrication for the sake of sports obsessives. Just ask Paul George, who made $7 million extra for making Third Team All-NBA in 2014. In 2017, he narrowly missed out on a Third Team selection in one of the most competitive forward ballots ever, thereby failing to qualify for a supermax deal and missing out on around $40 million. There is certainly less at stake for All-Star, but there is far more than respect and pride on the line.
As the All-Star conversation has picked up in the past few weeks, I’ve cast a wide net to try to determine what my picks for the two 12-man rosters would look like.
To me, there are a slew of fairly straightforward locks in each conference:
Here are what the actual teams ended up looking like:
After my list of locks in which everyone other than Bam Adebayo made the team, there are seven(!) total spots for a massive group of vets, players making leaps into their primes, and a precocious group of young guns.
Competing for the 4 spots in the West, in no particular order:
- Rudy Gobert
- Mike Conley
- Donovan Mitchell
- Ja Morant
- Brandon Ingram
- Zion Williamson
- CJ McCollum
- Christian Wood
- Chris Paul
- Devin Booker
- DeMar DeRozan
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
- De’Aaron Fox
Karl-Anthony Towns and Klay Thompson would also safely be in the mix if not for injuries.
Competing for 4 spots (removing Bam) in the East, in no particular order:
- Bam Adebayo
- Khris Middleton
- Jrue Holiday
- Trae Young
- Clint Capela
- Domantas Sabonis
- Malcolm Brogdon
- Nikola Vucevic
- Tobias Harris
- Ben Simmons
- Jimmy Butler
- Jerami Grant
- Zach LaVine
- Julius Randle
- Fred VanVleet
- Pascal Siakam
- Kyle Lowry
- Collin Sexton
Some of these players will have played their way out of the mix already (Sexton), been injured (McCollum and Lowry), or lack a statistical basis for their candidacy this season despite their actual talent (Siakam). Some will be punished for being on excessively bad teams, even though there aren’t any truly abominable ones in the league this year; every franchise has something to be excited about.
For those counting, that is thirty-one players for eight remaining spots. That makes for an extremely competitive battle to get into the All-Star Game. We’ve already seen this problem demonstrate itself in prior years. With the conference imbalance, players like Mike Conley and CJ McCollum have famously never made an All-Star Game, despite being obviously far better than some of the guards in the 70s and 80s who were All-Stars putting up 25 points on 35-win teams. It makes for fun conversation, but you also want these excellent, unselfish players to gain proper recognition. The analytics movement has helped to decrease the focus on basic counting stats, but points still strongly influence who gets into the All-Star Game — just ask one-time All-Star and two-time DPOY Rudy Gobert. What we don’t want is to freely reward ‘empty calorie’ scoring on weak teams for the sake of an All-Star berth. Mike Conley has sacrificed individual numbers in order to help the Jazz reach the 1 seed in the West, and he’s a better player for it.
From a fan perspective, I just want to see the best players performing in the All-Star Game: it’s good for the sport, good for younger fans, and in many ways hearkens back the original intent of the game. As it stands today, I probably wouldn’t put Zion Williamson on my ballot. But he should be there. It’s good for basketball; Zion is a magnet, and draws attention wherever he goes.
From a historical perspective, it’s harder than ever to measure current NBA players against previous ones due to the rapid evolution of the sport. Awards are meant to convey some level of uniformity to calibrate how a player stacked up against others in their respective era. Was Bob Cousy a more talented basketball player than James Harden? Absolutely not. But based on All-NBA selections, MVPs, etc. we might hold them in similar esteem historically.
However, this is entirely unfair to modern players, as the population and talent level of the league has grown immensely, with no change to the size of All-Star rosters.
The All-Star Game began in 1951, when there were 11 teams. With 12 man rosters, that averages out to about two players per roster, or 1 in every 6 players. The NBA hovered around that many teams until 1968, after the advent of the ABA. The NBA ramped up expansion, jumping to 14 teams, then to 18, by 1976. In those years, there were 24 spots for 216 players (18 teams x 12 players on a roster). Yet there were also around 132 players in the ABA — that league averaged 11 teams per year, with different franchises folding and new ones joining — who were not competing for the same award. As you might expect, with rapid expansion, and brain drain into the ABA, the NBA product declined due to a lack of competent players.
The ABA folded in 1976, and 4 teams joined the NBA, bumping into to 22 teams for the ‘76–’77 season. The talent caught up with teams as basketball became more popular than ever before, reaching a high in the late 80s and early 90s. The NBA actually wisely expanded at the right time, slowly climbing up to 29 teams by 1995, and finally 30 in 2004.
I think my point here is clear: it doesn’t make a ton of sense that we’re still measuring the number of All-Star selections a modern day player receives against a player who played in the 70s.
Here are the actual numbers once again:
Generally speaking, since the 80s, it’s a given that the best players would have no trouble making All-Stars today. So, an argument can be made that though there were fewer players in the league, the top-level talent was such that an All-Star berth 20+ years ago is as impressive as one today.
However, I would contend that it’s still less impressive. Up until very recently, there have always been truly bad teams, with no decent player on the entire roster. Night to night, players try harder than ever on defense, and every team has at least a couple players of respectable quality. The bottom five teams in the league right now are the Wizards, Pistons, Cavs, Rockets, and T-Wolves. Think about how many good players exist on those rosters, many of whom aren’t in the All-Star conversation, for a variety of reasons. I think this matters.
I think the tide of the talent has risen enough to significantly improve the ability of the lower end All-Star players. That pool of players being much more impressive than before makes decisions much murkier. We have an idea of what an All-Star season is, and more players than ever before are eclipsing that bar.
I think there is more upper echelon talent than ever before in the NBA right now. That is a conversation for a different day. More germane to this discussion is that the talent level of players ranked in the top 10–25, and players ranked 25–50, is more impressive than ever before. Just look at the crop of players I mentioned above (in no order): Jokic, LeBron, Kawhi, Steph, Dame, Luka, Davis, PG, Giannis, Durant, Embiid, Harden, Kyrie, Brown, Tatum, Beal, Bam, Gobert, Conley, Mitchell, Morant, Ingram, Zion, CJ, Wood, CP3, Booker, DeRozan, SGA, Fox, Middleton, Holiday, Young, Capela, Sabonis, Brogdon, Vucevic, Harris, Simmons, Butler, Jerami Grant, Lavine, Randle, VanVleet, Siakam, Lowry, Sexton.
And that’s before mentioning other good to great players that could be worthy of a nod when healthy / performing to their ability, including Kevin Love, Blake Griffin, John Wall, Russell Westbrook, Towns, D’Angelo Russell, Klay, Draymond Green, Kemba Walker, Victor Oladipo, Goran Dragic, Kristaps Porzingis…
That’s 59 players right there. Are you telling me that is not an unbelievable collection of talent? All of those guys feel like top 50 players (when healthy), yet, by definition, they can’t be. The impressive collection of talent coming down the NBA pipeline is also worth noting. Yes, I understand that as new players age into All-Star quality, older ones age out. But that process is taking longer than ever, as breakthroughs in sports science allows players to perform well into their 30s, thereby making the talent pool that much more competitive year to year. I need not mention LeBron, but Chris Paul and Kyle Lowry have collectively compiled most of the greatest seasons ever by 6'1" point guards playing in their 30s.
I think we do collectively hedge older All-Star counts a little bit, understanding that 1970s All-Star berths to today is not apples to apples. But it’s not enough. Here is a list of all players who made an All-Star team in the 1970s. Many of the players who garnered a handful of All-Star appearances are remembered very fondly. Doing the math on how much easier it was to get into the ASG is making me question just how boosted their legacy is compared to players of today who barely squeak into one or two appearances.
Jrue Holiday has one appearance. Conley and McCollum, zero! Marc Gasol only three. Beal missed last year while averaging 30 PPG. CP3 missed from 2017–2019. When aligning these numbers historically, it can sway Hall of Fame voters. Voters might scoff at comparing a Conley to a Tiny Archibald, Dave Bing, or Mitch Ritchmond — all Hall of Fame guards with multiple All-Star nods — when in reality, Conley may not be that far off in terms of stature within the league. Ring aside, Gobert is a better player than Ben Wallace, but at present has three fewer All-Stars. That separation should be rectified — if not for Gobert, then for the next transcendent defender stuck in a strong conference.
NBA history is littered with asterisks, what-ifs, and mistakes by the media. Most people’s memories are fairly short, and the record books become the only source of measurement, in spite of how primitive their metrics are. Because of the game’s continuing evolution, measuring players relative to their peers is the best way to determine where they rank historically. Sidney Crosby’s numbers can’t compare to those of the 1980s, but we all know him to be the best player of the past 15 years. Therefore, he sits in virtually everybody’s top ten, and many consider him top five (including myself), regardless of inferior “stats”.
Given the league’s expansion, and its ever-increasing number of All-Star caliber players — or to reframe, players who could be at least the third best player on a championship team — it’s critical to give proper due, in order to get a somewhat realistic view of how good a player truly is an the grand scheme of things.
Here at The Bench Connection headquarters, we are always trying to contextualize the quirks of the league and its players across eras, and allowing for more uniform standards for awards makes for a much more accurate snapshot of a given moment in NBA history. Expanding to 14 players per conference for the All-Star Game — as a start — will only benefit everyone in the long run.
