DeMarcus Cousins snub shows All-Star selection's flaws
Your move, commish.
But know this much, if you're NBA Commissioner Adam Silver: No matter who you pick as the injury replacement for the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant on the Western Conference All-Star team, the more important move is the one that will take more time to put into place.
It's time for this system to change.
As if it's not bad enough that the fans who vote on the game's starters so often turn this into a popularity contest, the league's coaches made some questionable decisions Thursday that should spark a serious discussion about whether this whole midseason fiasco — err, fiesta — needs to be seriously analyzed. Tweak the voting system. Add a few roster spots. Maybe even let us media folk have a say.
Anything to avoid this annual affair in which deserving players don't get their just due.
Tim Duncan over DeMarcus Cousins? Not this year.
I've been as critical as anyone of the Sacramento Kings' big man in the past, but he has kept his cool this season while playing his way into the MVP discussion early on and — despite the team's struggles since — is currently sixth in the NBA in scoring (23.8 points per game) among players who have played at least 22 games and third in rebounding (12.3 per) among all players. That distinction relating to scoring is relevant to this conversation, of course, because of this controversial reality: Oklahoma City Thunder star and reigning MVP Kevin Durant — who has missed 25 of 46 games because of injuries — made the team over Cousins (who played in 32 of 44 games, while missing significant time with viral meningitis).
Duncan, meanwhile, is your classic lifetime-achievement pick. The San Antonio Spurs legend who may retire this summer is averaging 14.7 points and 10.1 rebounds for the defending champion squad that is currently in sixth place in the West. And while his defense has been outstanding for this Spurs team that has the fifth-best unit on that end, there's not an advanced scout alive whose routine report focuses more on Duncan than it does Cousins.
The Damian Lillard snub in the West was the other contentious one, as the Portland Trail Blazers point guard has been even better this season (21.8 points, 6.2 assists per game for a Blazers team that, at 32-14, is third in the West) than he was in 2013-14 when he got his first All-Star nod. Like Cousins, Lillard now will wait and hope that Silver calls his name as the Bryant replacement.
In a vacuum, there is room for these kinds of choices so long as the vast majority of the picks are made largely on production/success/dominance etc. But when uber-popular stars such as Bryant and the New York Knicks' Carmelo Anthony are gift-wrapped starting spots that even they might admit they don't deserve, it puts even more pressure on the coaches who vote on the reserves to get it right. Yet here's the problem on that front: there are politics that come into play with coaches, too.
The answer to all of this may not be crystal clear, but the good news here is that one of the early hallmarks of Silver's tenure has been his well-chronicled willingness to analyze anything that might make his league better. Add the All-Star voting process to that list, Adam. Please.
