With All-Star reserves being announced tomorrow, you know I had to get my picks out there. In selecting my bench, I stuck with those same starters I picked last week.
As a reminder, my starters in the East were Jalen Brunson and Donovan Mitchell in the backcourt, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jayson Tatum, and Karl-Anthony Towns in the frontcourt. (aka the actual starters) In the West, I had Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Anthony Edwards at guard, with Nikola Jokic, Kevin Durant, and Victor Wembanyama up front.
The NBA trade deadline is next week, so I’m offering a 25% discount on paid subscriptions.
A paid subscription gets you access to weekly deep dives, Three Things I Noticed on League Pass, subscriber mailbags and chats, and daily-updating leaderboards for Adjusted Efficiency, Aggression+, and Variance+. For a full breakdown of what’s on offer, click right here.
Before we get to the picks, here are a few things to keep in mind:
This “ballot” does not count. So if you want to get angry about it, save your energy! It doesn’t mean anything anyway and you can rest easy knowing that dummies like me will not affect whether or not your favorite player makes it.
However, if I didn’t vote for your favorite player, please know from the bottom of my heart that it’s not because I hate and/or didn’t watch your favorite team. It’s because I hate you, personally.
I do not give extra credit for team success and feel no need to have specific teams represented with a certain number of players because of where that team falls in the standings. The reward for being a really good team is the wins. Team record is a factor, but it is just a factor — not a determinative one.
Without further ado…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Last Night, In Basketball to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.