All-Star Reactions

So, I got 6/7 on both the East and West teams and 8/9 on both the rookie and sophomore teams... not too bad I guess. The rookies and sophomore misses... I don't have a problem with at all. Aaron Brooks instead of Nick Young, Marc Gasol instead of Kevin Love. Both Brooks and Gasol were on my first honorable mentions and have put up excellent and comparable campaigns thus far this season. Congrats to them.

The all-stars though... I'm upset with both of my misses. Ray Allen seriously got screwed. Despite their little 2-7 slide after Christmas, the Celtics are just as formidable as ever and are still ranked 1st in the Eastern conference as of this post. Ray Allen in 2nd in minutes played (by mere seconds) to Pierce. He's also second in scoring, again to Pierce (though on much better percentages, 50% fg, 41% 3pt).

Advance stats wise... Allen has the greatest DRtg and ORtg difference on the Celtics at 20 (points scored per 100 possessions vs. points given per 100 possessions). He's also got the highest Win Share (7.3 vs. 64.) and is 2nd in PER. Oh yeah, and he also leads the team in +/- at 11.9. It'd be easy to argue that he's the best Celtic so far, or at least better than Pierce. He totally deserved to go over Harris... who like I noted, has been slumping for the past 5-6 weeks and is playing on a worse team.

And in the west, David West is an even worse all-star selection. I'm sorry, but if you're a big (PF/C) and "all-star" level, you need to friggin grab 10 rebounds or be damn close to it.

Lets go back to advance stats, cuz well, I like stats! Lets compare West to his other PF all-star mates in Gasol, Amare, and Dirk... keep in mind that I've already said that Amare doesn't deserve his all-star nod, so technically, West should have BETTER stats than Amare, but he doesn't. Per 36 min, he has the worst rebounding numbers at 6.7 rpg. That's like a small forward's numbers. Pathetic. True rebound rate (adjusting for # of possessions), West still comes in last at 11.6%. FG% wise, he's 2nd to last, and just .003% better than Dirk, though Dirk shoots 3s. When you look at True Shooting % (adjusts for 3s and FTs) or Effective FG % (adjusts for 2s and 3s), he's dead last. He's also dead last in PER as well.

I understand he was an all-star last year, but that was partially because the Hornets were the top team then and such a pleasant surprise to everyone. This year, the Hornets are slightly worse (28 wins through their first 42 games vs. 30 wins last year), and West is having a down season on top of missing his last 5 games (and counting). That's a piss poor selection imho. I didn't even mention him at all (honorable mentions or otherwise) cuz I didn't think he was even close to all-star level. Ah well, at least that means Aldridge will soon be an all-star too, considering their stats are actually VERY close.

Oh yeah, big props to Shaq for making it. I'm sure the whole Shaq/Kobe union will be the dominant topic for all-star weekend. Being the big host and all, I expect lots of fun shenanigans from Shaq that weekend and maybe even a Kobe to Shaq alley-oop too ;-)

In honor of Shaq, here's a retread of his impromptu dance off with LeBron and Dwight at his last all-star appearance.