FanHouse AllStarSnubs

Why do we always wait until after the All Star selections to talk about snubs? FanHouse is here to break the mold and tell you who might be out and why they got passed over by the fans first and then the coaches.

Ever since Josh Howard stormed into Reynolds Coliseum the RBC Center and ripped NC State's heart out during my second third senior year, it has been blatantly obvious to me that he was going to be a dominant player (it was actually already obvious, but had never really been so irritatingly presented before then). Note that I'm not claiming to be a prophet, seeing as how he was ACC POY, but it sure seemed to slip by some others since he fell to the middle of the first round in the draft.

And that ignorance continues to progress through the general NBA community to this day as well, with Howard unlikely to make an All Star appearance again this year. And this year, it will actually kind of disprove the notion that voters only care about how much a player scores. Howard is averaging 20.9 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game, yet because Dirk Nowitzki gets most of the credit (and Howard acknowledges deferring to him late in games), it's highly unlikely he will be on the court for the midseason showcase.

Why do we always wait until after the All Star selections to talk about snubs? FanHouse is here to break the mold and tell you who might be out and why they got passed over by the fans first and then the coaches.

Honestly, sometimes I have to wonder what a guy needs to do to be an All Star. And then I remember, "oh yeah, for some stupid reason you have to average 20 points per game." Unfortunately for Brandon Roy, he does not. He averages 19.4 points per game.

So really, I should just stop arguing right now. It's not 20, so he's not guaranteed. Despite the fact that the Portland Trailblazers, the same team that had the first overall pick in last year's NBA draft, is a half game out of first in the Northwest Division. Despite the fact that he is also hitting 46 percent from the floor. Despite the fact that he averages a ridiculously sparse 1.9 turnovers per game even though he does most of the ball handling for Portland. And despite the fact that he also averages 4.4 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game.

The other big issue is, as it has been pointed out by other people, that Roy does not do anything on the court that is singularly flashy -- he simply a rock solid all out production machine that, based on his team's record this year, also has a slew of those intangibles that so many voters, et al care about. Oh, and just so you know, if he pulled out a half point and a half rebound more per game, we would be freaking out about the fact that he's not already locked in as an All Star (see Pierce, Paul).

Why do we always wait until after the All Star selections to talk about snubs? FanHouse is here to break the mold and tell you who might be out and why they got passed over by the fans first and then the coaches.

Tayshaun Prince isn't your typical snub, because... well, no one remotely expects him to get a nod, and no one seems terribly upset about it. Tayshaun has even accepted he'll never be an All-Star.

"I am never going to be recognized as an All-Star player unless I put up numbers," Prince said after practice Sunday. "In this league, they won't say that, but you have to put up numbers to be an All-Star. If there was ever a situation where you didn't have to put up numbers to make an All-Star team, I would have already been on one a long time ago."

The refusal to commend great, consistent defense on a league-wide level is among the biggest problems with current NBA media (blogs included); a Prince All-Star berth wouldn't even fix it. A philosophical Ron Artest got into this discussion in a great interview with Michael Tillery over the summer.

"You don't get max money for hustling. That's the reason why I started scoring. I don't like to shoot fade away jumpers. I can do it though. I don't want to play like that. I like to pass the ball and play defense. That's not going to get you maximum money. You have to score and do all this other stuff."

From All-Star berths to contracts, defense is largely ignored even though it's half the game. Prince and Josh Howard are probably the two best defensive swingmen in the game, and neither will be representing in New Orleans. And no, I can't come up with sane proposal which would get them there. Our collective ignorance or ignoring of defense, though... that's a shame larger than the sum of all the individual snubs we'll bitch about Thursday.

Why do we always wait until after the All Star selections to talk about snubs? FanHouse is here to break the mold and tell you who might be out and why they got passed over by the fans first and then the coaches.

There seems to be some stigma about starting slow and how it affects the possibility of a player becoming an All Star; granted, it makes sense providing that the slow start was long enough. For some players, they overcome quickly and post monster numbers before the midway point. For others, "overcome" is not the word so much as "fall-ass-backwards" might be. Jose Calderon is not the recipient of really stupid luck though, he just happened to back up T.J. Ford for the last two years. And Ford just happens to get hurt a lot. As a result, Calderon has gotten tons of playing time this year and converted that time into 12.1 points and 8.6 assists per game.

And here's the thing about his "slow" start -- Calderon averaged 9.5 points, 7.9 assists and 0.9 steals per game while shooting 47 percent from the floor in November. And that was playing 25 minutes a game, five of which he started. When Ford went down again, Calderon kept up his near double-double pace, averaging 12.8 points and 8.6 assists per game for the month of December, starting 13 out of 16 games and shooting 52 percent from the floor. Then, with Ford out indefinitely, Calderon absolutely caught fire in January, averaging 14.5 points, 10.1 assists, 2.0 steals while actually improving on his field goal percentage, however slight (53 percent).

So what we have here is a backup, pressed into big minutes (nearly 40 in January), and averaging almost a double-double with points and assists. We also have a Toronto team that is 24-19 and tied for the fourth best record in the East despite losing their starting point guard. You could say that it is Chris Bosh playing really well, but I would call you silly. It is because the should-be All Star, will-be All Star Snub flashy Spanish point guard has not missed a beat.

Why do we always wait until after the All Star selections to talk about snubs? FanHouse is here to break the mold and tell you who might be out and why they got passed over by the fans first and then the coaches.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for defensive statistics. Or high flying athletic swingman, forward types that can play multiple positions. It is with that love that I mourn the obvious All Star snubbage coming Gerald Wallace's way.

Wallace has only two flaws; being "injury prone" is not real. He is, however, a liability from the free throw line (73 percent) and he did not have a wham-bang-boom! start, if you will allow me to go all Adam West-Batman on you. And that weak month was November, in which Wallace averaged 18.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 2.0 steals and 0.8 blocks per game. Yes. That was the bad month.

In December, Wallace began stepping it up, averaging that magic 21.4 points per game, 5.3 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 2.3 steals and 1.0 blocks. Those are beasty, beasty all around numbers. But he was not done. In January? Wallace earned Eastern Conference Player of the Month as he averaged 23.7 points, 8.1 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 2.4 steals and 1.1 blocks. Seriously. Think about how freaking absurd those numbers are in terms of flat out across the board dominance.

So to recap briefly: Wallace has a coach that does not know how to motivate his team, he is being played an Iversonian-like 40 plus minutes per night, and he was the best player in the Eastern Conference for January, which is more than one third of what this All Star vote is supposed to be about. No, seriously; what more do you need?

Why do we always wait until after the All Star selections to talk about snubs? FanHouse is here to break the mold and tell you who might be out and why they got passed over by the fans first and then the coaches.

I want a freaking answer why the man-beast-Hawk known as J-Smoove is not going to make the All Star Game. And if that response is "Caron Butler", I am perfectly fine with it. But there are four available spots (the two additional forward slots and then two "wild-card" reserves), and one of them should have Josh Smith's name on it.

But it probably won't. Mainly because the Hawks are 18-22 and their season is basically already over as Billy Knight looks forward to squandering another lottery pi ... wait ... what's that? The Atlanta Hawks might actually make the playoffs? Surely you jest. Because if they are "so good" (it's the East, lighten up) this year, it might have something to do with Smith actually starting out the way he has finished the last two seasons.

And how is he starting out? How does averaging 18.2 points, 8.1 boards, 3.5 assists, 1.9 steals and a stupidly absurd 3.4 blocks per game sound to you? If I could find an athletic, versatile forward that could put up those numbers every night, is that something that you might be interested in?

And, yes, I am perfectly aware that both Marvin Williams and Al Horford are surprising/playing to potential this year and Joe Johnson is an elite scorer. But none of that -- the record, the production from other players -- can underscore the ridiculous across-the-board stat lines that J-Smoove is posting in 2007-08. And maybe it's the fantasy nerd in me screaming in disbelief at the things I hear, but how is Smith's season long stat-line not at least equal for the consideration given to the rest of his peers? The problem is that most voters/fans/coaches are so naive and off base in determining who is in and who is out that they weigh "20 points per game" more heavily than "18 points and three and a half blocks". Josh Smith should be in the All Star Game. I feel that is nothing short of factual. But the biggest crime is that you have not and will not hear anyone discuss it, mainly because he does not average twenty points.

So the all-star teams have finally been decided. You can't have everyone, and there really isn't a very strong argument for anybody who made it to be left off. But are there some players who got shafted? Let's look at some players who were possibly snubbed out of the All-Star game from the National League East (and believe it or not, only half of them are shortstops):

Hanley Ramirez: Florida Marlins It's odd to see only one shortstop chosen to back up Jose Reyes when there are five deserving candidates for the team. I would have expected two shortstops to get snubbed but not three. Hanley Ramirez's .320 average, 11 HR's and 24 stolen bases are certainly deserving. Ramirez's 29 RBI's are a bit low, but he's been in the lead off position most of the season.

Edgar Renteria: Atlanta Braves Renteria also suffers from the glut at shortstop, because he easily gets the least attention of any of the big shortstops out there. Renteria has a .314 average, 10 HR's, 41 RBI's, 20 doubles, and a .386 OBP. With everybody focusing on the young guns, it's ironic that the guy who's been around the longest gets the least pub.

Dan Uggla: Florida Marlins Uggla (pictured) is on pace for a 34 HR, 100 RBI season, phenomenal for a second baseman. He was probably victimized by the "one player per team" rule, which saw Pittsburgh's Freddy Sanchez make the team with much less in terms of power than Uggla. While Sanchez is hitting around the .300 mark which blows Uggla's average away, his OBP is actually only marginally higher than Uggla's (.331 to .328 as of yesterday).