NBA All-Star reserve selection remains weird as hell

It appears some NBA coaches punished some players for absences or team quality, but others didn't. The result is an incomprehensible list of All-Star reserves.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

The thing to know about NBA All-Star reserve selections (results here) is that the voting is done by a really small number of people. That leads to the overall narrative about why certain players are picked and others are not being really incomprehensible.

The maximum voting base for All-Star reserves is 30: every head coach in the league gets a vote. In reality, given the tight turnaround and varying levels of interest, one assumes that the league receives fewer than 30 votes. This is one of the only areas in which the league doesn’t release raw vote counts, so we don’t know how many votes were made, and how close the voting was between snubs and selections. This would be valuable information; I wish the NBA would release it. We don’t need the names of coaches attached to ballots — just the raw numbers would be great. Alas.

The other wrinkle is that coaches cannot vote for their own players. One presumes that this could lead to more sophisticated game theorists to “throw away” some votes on non-viable candidates. Here’s an example. A theoretical example. I have no insight into anyone’s votes. Say you have a fringe All-Star — Jaren Jackson Jr., for example. You’re Taylor Jenkins. You can’t vote for your own players as All-Stars. You know Ja Morant is going to get in, so you vote for whichever guard candidates you think are best. You also slot guards in at the wildcard spots, because you have a frontcourt candidate — Jackson — who is on the bubble and you want to reduce competition. You have to make three frontcourt votes. Are you going to place your vote for players legitimately in competition with JJJ for a frontcourt or wild card All-Star spot, like Anthony Davis, Domantas Sabonis or Lauri Markkanen? Or are you going to slot in an even more fringe candidate like Jerami Grant, Deandre Ayton or Kawhi Leonard? The latter boosts JJJ’s chances of making. Do you think NBA coaches are above a bit of nonsense to get their players in the All-Star Game?

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but we won’t know until we see if there are weird All-Star votes happening.

In any case, it really does appear that some voters heavily punished players who missed a lot of games and some voters didn’t. JJJ has played 35 games this year; Davis has played 29. Is that a meaningful difference when you consider AD’s impact compared to JJJ’s?

How about this? JJJ has played exactly 22 minutes more than AD this season. 22.

This isn’t to suggest that JJJ isn’t a worthy All-Star, and Memphis is obviously more deserving of a second All-Star than are the 12th place Lakers. But it’s pretty odd, right?

also i’m more convinced than ever that the JJJ reddit post was a false flag operation by the grizzlies to get JJJ positive attention the weekend that NBA coaches were voting on all-star reserves

I’m obviously partial to De’Aaron Fox, and I thought Anthony Edwards and Aaron Gordon had strong cases, too. Having 12 slots when there are 15 worthy candidates every year is really tough! One presumes that Zion will not play in All-Star, and I’m betting that either Gordon (rewarding the best team) or Edwards (lift up a rising star) will be Adam Silver’s replacement choice.