Who should make the 2024 NBA All-Star Game?

Filling out my officially unofficial ballot

It is that time of year once again, folks. In the space below, you will find my officially unofficial NBA All-Star picks. By that I mean, this “ballot” does not count. So if you want to get angry about it, don’t! It doesn’t mean anything anyway.

But given the amount of time and energy I put into watching and analyzing this sport every day and night, I wanted to get my picks on (virtual) paper before the starters are announced tonight.

Without further ado…

Several of these are not even worth discussing. Haliburton, Giannis, Embiid, and Tatum were stone-cold locks in the East, as were Doncic, Gilgeous-Alexander, and Jokic in the West. That left one Eastern Conference guard spot and two Western Conference frontcourt spots up for grabs.

In the East, it came down to Brunson, Damian Lillard, Tyrese Maxey, Donovan Mitchell. This is a group of players with remarkably similar numbers. I mean, they are almost exactly the same in a whole bunch of per-game and rate stats. Mitchell leads in scoring, Lillard leads in assists, Brunson has been the most efficient shooter, Maxey has played the most minutes and kept best care of the ball. But it’s all incredibly tight.

Basketball-Reference

The first thing I did was eliminate Mitchell and send him to the reserve pool. Sorry, Donovan, but when things are this close and the other candidates have all played at least 275 more minutes than you, them’s the breaks. So we’re left with Brunson, Lillard, and Maxey. I’m partial to Brunson for several reasons.

First, he’s carrying the largest usage burden of the three players, both overall and relative to his teammates. Brunson and Julius Randle have almost identical usage rates (29.3% to 29.4%), while Lillard (27.9%) lags far behind Giannis (33.4%) in usage and responsibility, as does Maxey (26.9%) behind Embiid (39.0%). Throw in the fact that he has been the most-efficient shooter of the three (0.547 eFG%), with Lillard moving ahead in true-shooting thanks to his foul-drawing exploits, and I think he has been the best of the three players at the thing each of them does best: scoring.

Brunson’s also been most responsible of the group for setting up his teammates, in terms of the share of baskets he’s assisted while on the floor, ranking behind the others in assists per game mostly due to pace. His night-to-night offensive production he has been much more consistent than Maxey and just as consistent as Lillard. (We can actually measure this, using a framework developed by Nylon Calculus). And even outside of his charge-drawing ability (he leads the NBA in charges drawn) he has been easily the best defender of the trio this year.

As for the West, I eventually had to choose two of Durant, James, Anthony Davis, and Kawhi Leonard.

Basketball-Reference

Durant’s utterly outrageous shooting is the thing that tipped me in his direction more than anything else. This man shoots more jumpers than any of the other three players and he is still leading them in efficiency, thanks to the fact that he’s knocking down FORTY-SIX-POINT-FOUR percent of his treys. That’s disgusting. The most efficient shooter, with the highest usage, and the second-highest assist rate, while also playing strong, versatile defense, is going to get a spot for me. (He’s also playing 37.1 minutes a night, which keeps him in the same range as LeBron and Kawhi for total minutes despite playing in fewer games.)

I had a tougher time choosing between LeBron, AD, and Kawhi. LeBron leads the three in Estimated Plus-Minus at dunksandthrees. Kawhi leads in eRAPTOR, Neil Paine’s estimated version of what used to be FiveThirtyEight’s RAPTOR metric. And Davis leads in LEBRON at Bball-Index. LeBron leads in Box Plus-Minus and is tied with AD in VORP, while Davis leads in Win Shares per 48 minutes.

It came down to LeBron or Kawhi for me, because when I watch the Lakers, I feel LeBron’s total control of the game more than I do Davis’. The team is better on defense than offense and Davis is obviously the main catalyst for that, but part of the reason he’s able to be the defensive force he is, is because of everything else that LeBron has to shoulder while Davis largely operates as a(n extremely high level) complementary offensive threat.

LeBron is shooting an outrageous 57.7% on twos, and he’s having the best three-point shooting season of his career. He’s lagging behind in true shooting mostly because of his relative weakness at the free-throw line, but he’s making a respectable-enough percentage of his tries for me to elide that fact. He’s obviously got by far the most responsibility for spearheading the entire operation of his team’s offense… but that offense also has not been very good. (22nd in the NBA, as of this writing.) Somewhere between “not much” and “none” of that seems to LeBron’s “fault,” though; it’s a below-average shooting team that does not grab offensive rebounds because it prioritizes transition defense. The team only barely manages to outscore its opponents with LeBron in the game, but it also gets crushed with him out. (The Lakers have been outscored with Davis on the floor and are 2.0 points per 100 possessions better with him on the bench.)

At the same time, Kawhi is leading a team with a top-six offense and an average-ish defense, and since mid-November he has basically been even better than what we would typically call Peak Kawhi: he's averaging 24.9 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 1.6 steals, and a block per game while sporting a 54-45-91 shooting line in his last 28 games. Kawhi, though, is allowed to be the tip of the sphere. He is a play-finisher, operating often in isolation and just ruthlessly singing the nets with pull-up pops and fadeaway finishes. He remains an excellent and borderline terrifying defender, even if he’s not quite as unbeatable on that end as he used to be. The on-off numbers are even stronger for Kawhi than they are for LeBron: the Clippers demolish teams when he’s in the game (+11.3 per 100) and get outscored when he’s out (-2.9 per 100).

It’s an incredibly close call and I honestly don’t feel super great about picking one over the other. I went with LeBron due to the sheer burden he shoulders for his team, even if that team is not as good as the one Kawhi is piloting.

While they didn’t make the cut as starters, I considered Maxey, Mitchell, and Lillard locks for reserve slots, along with Bam Adebayo. I’m not sure a reasonable argument can be made against any of them except for maybe Lillard, on the basis of his defense and the fact that he’s not been as good this season as he has in the past. (I don’t buy that latter argument. Dame is not competing against his own past. He’s competing against this year’s crop of Eastern Conference players.) With three guards and a center getting in, that left two frontcourt slots and one of the wild card spots, with (for me) 10 players from which to choose in the East. In the West, AD and Kawhi were locks for forward spots, and Steph and Edwards were locks at guard. That left (deep breath) FIFTEEN players in consideration for one frontcourt spot and the two wild card selections.

I’d first like to note that I don’t subscribe to the idea that certain teams “deserve” a certain number of All-Stars, or that you need to get representation for every team with a certain place in the standings.

The reward for being a good team is the wins and the likely playoff berth you get as a result of being that good. An All-Star selection is for rewarding the 12 best players in each conference within the confines of the positional rules. So I don’t care, for example, that the Timberwolves are in first place in the West and they only had one player make my team, while the ninth-place Lakers have two, and I don’t care that the Raptors are considerably behind the Magic in the standings but got a representative while Orlando did not. The reward for being a good basketball team is the wins.

That said, my Eastern Conference frontcourt candidates were Barnes, Randle, Jarrett Allen, Paolo Banchero, Jimmy Butler, Kristaps Porzingis, and Franz Wagner.

I think Butler has probably been the best of the bench when on the floor, but given that he has played only 952 minutes, as of this writing, I couldn’t justify giving him a spot. (By way of comparison, Randle has played 1,568.) For the last month or so, Allen has been outrageously good. He and Mitchell (along with Sam Merrill, weirdly) are basically the only thing keeping the Cavaliers afloat. But the rest of these guys carry such a larger burden in the context of their teams that I couldn’t bring myself to give him a spot over any of them.

Banchero will likely get more support than Wagner from the general public and possibly from the coaches, but I don’t see it, beyond the fact that he seems like he’s going to be an All-Star for a really long time. Wagner has been significantly more efficient, he’s the better defender, he checks in far ahead in basically all of the all-in-one impact measurements we have available, he even scores at basically the exact same rate on a per-minute basis. Banchero has played a lot more minutes than Wagner, and that’s the basis of his candidacy to make it over his teammate. But I think Barnes, Porzingis, and Randle have all probably had better, more impactful seasons than both Magic forwards. Those guys might be better eventually, but eventually isn’t here yet.

It was at this point that I realized Porzingis has also played only 960 minutes so far this season. With Barnes (1,547) and Randle (1,568) each playing around SIX HUNDRED more minutes, I couldn’t justify a spot for Porzingis in the frontcourt, even if I think the way he has changed the contours of the Celtics’ offense and defense with his ability to space the floor and protect the rim might make him even more valuable to his team than Barnes and/or Randle are to theirs, despite the fact that he’s clearly the third offensive option on his own team. (I won’t lie; I had Butler and Porzingis in those spots until I noticed just how wide the minutes gap was. Barnes and Randle have basically played 50-60% more minutes. It’s too big a gap to make up.)

For the wild card spot, I considered the same frontcourt candidates, plus Brown, Derrick White, and Trae Young. White has the advanced stats case on lockdown. He crushes all the all-in-one metrics, the Celtics destroy teams when he’s on the floor, and because of his role within Boston’s offense, he has been more efficient than both Brown and Young. But not by all that much anymore, thanks to his recent shooting downturn. And with that advantage minimized, I was left to choose between the two players who play far larger role in their teams’ success. Trae obviously carries an even larger offensive burden than does Jaylen, but their similar efficiency, plus Brown’s obvious utility as a defender compared with Young’s … lack of the same (even in what has probably been his best defensive season) tipped the scales in Brown’s direction.

Then there’s the West. For the lone remaining frontcourt spots, my candidates were George, Rudy Gobert, Chet Holmgren, Brandon Ingram, Jalen Williams, Lauri Markkanen, Domantas Sabonis, Alperen Sengun, Karl-Anthony Towns, Victory Wembanyama, and Zion Williamson. The same group, plus Booker, Fox, Desmond Bane, and Jamal Murray were considered for the wild card slots.

And honestly, it wasn’t as difficult to choose between this group as I thought it would be. Murray, like Butler and Porzingis, just hasn’t played enough minutes. Williamson simply hasn’t been good enough relative to the other candidates. Level-of-responsibility-wise, I couldn’t bring myself to take Holmgren, Williams, or Sengun over the rest.

So I was left with PG, Gobert, Ingram, Markkanen, Sabonis, Towns, and Wembanyama in the frontcourt, along Booker, Fox, and Bane for wild cards. Wemby has been incredible for the most 4-5 weeks, but his overall inefficiency (especially on jumpers) and his lack of playing time compared with the others knocked him out. (I imagine this will be the last time for a very long time that he’s not playing on All-Star Sunday. Unless he gets in. Then he will obviously be playing.)

Gobert is the foundation of Minnesota’s defense, which is the reason that team is really good, but he’s been even more of a non-entity offensively this year than in seasons past, with this being the worst finishing season of his career and his lowest usage rate since 2016. His defensive rebounding is also down, even from where it was last year, which was already a steep drop from where it had been in Utah. (Playing with Towns and/or Naz Reid a lot of the time obviously affects this.) I think Gobert has more to do with Minnesota’s success than Towns, even with Towns’ recent scoring tear, so if I wasn’t taking Rudy, I couldn’t take KAT. Ingram just hasn’t been nearly as efficient as the other guys, and since the primary thing he does is score, I bumped him out. (His recent stretch of improved passing gave me pause, though.)

That left George, Markkanen, Sabonis, Booker, Fox, and Bane for three spots, one of which had to go to PG, Lauri, or Domas. I went with George. Markkanen has the shooting, Sabonis has the rebounding and playmaking, and George has the defense (and, surprisingly enough, the largest usage burden). I think the gap between him and the others in that area is the largest of the three, and in a call this close, that was enough to tip the scales in his favor by the narrowest of margins.

I gave serious consideration to giving Bane a spot, and then picking someone else as an injury replacement. He was having an outrageous season before his recent injury, despite the fact that Ja Morant, Marcus Smart, and Steven Adams have been out for basically the entire year. Shouldering a dramatic increase in usage and also playmaking responsibility, he's responded by scaling up with essentially no drop-off in his efficiency. He's such a good player. I just thing that Booker and Fox have had to do even more, and have done it at a slightly higher level, and they have all played essentially the same amount of minutes. So they got my final two spots.