Players from losing teams get slighted in All-Star vote

Al Jefferson's 21-and-12 averages weren't enough to earn a spot on the All-Star team. AP

RELATED • REACT: Your thoughts on biggest snubs? • BURNS: Snub talk an annual pastime

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Described as "trembling with anger'' over the news that one of his players had been snubbed from an NBA All-Star team, the general manager no longer could contain himself.

"I wonder if the coaches who were voting on the thing are seeing the same things we're seeing,'' said the GM, all vexed, irked and decidedly ticked off. "This is one of the worst decisions I've seen in a long time. I'm speaking out now. If they want to say something about me speaking out, that's too bad.''

A possible fine? Fine! If the league honchos wanted to hit him in the wallet after presiding over this miscarriage of justice, well, then they could live with two mistakes.

"Jalen Rose is an All-Star,'' Chicago's Jerry Krause insisted as the NBA's 2003 showcase event in Atlanta approached. "He belongs on the All-Star team.''

Don't they all.

It is an annual tradition, a rite of winter wedged in between the first windshield scraping and another Valentine's Day when you thought lingerie and she thought chocolate. Somebody always gets snubbed from an NBA All-Star team, left at the curb at the unfortunate intersection of shaky fan balloting and vague, agenda-driven guidelines followed by the conference coaches in selecting reserves.

Five years ago, Rose was a notable snubbee, halfway through the highest-scoring season of his career. He averaged 22.1 points that year (eight points better than his lifetime average) for a Bulls team that went 30-52; by the date of the All-Star Game in Atlanta, they were 17-32, so that was that.

Players from sub-.500 teams simply don't rate spots as All-Star reserves, the way many NBA head coaches see it. It is an unwritten and inconsistently applied "rule,'' an arbitrary filter that seems awfully self-serving for the men with whom it has become so popular. In what gets marketed as the climax of the league's most extroverted weekend all season, determining participants by their teams' results rather than their individual achievements is a real insider's play.

Seems kind of silly, frankly. Like, say, deciding the home-park advantage of the World Series with a game played mostly by guys who will be fishing in October.

Al Jefferson could be this year's Jalen Rose, though a more optimistic view might say he is this year's Carmelo Anthony, another young talent who needed an extra season or two to get some All-Star traction with the voters. Jefferson, the anchor of a bad-but-young (or is it young-but-bad?) Minnesota Timberwolves team, has posted stats this season that leap off the page. He gives these snaggletoothed Wolves what fangs they have, sitting at 9-36 on Thursday when the Western and Eastern Conference reserves were announced for the big event Feb. 17 in New Orleans.

Consider: No player in the West is averaging more points and more rebounds than Jefferson (21.2 ppg, 12.2 rpg). Only five guys in the league are averaging at least 20 points and 10 rebounds and the other four -- Dwight Howard, Antawn Jamison, Yao Ming and Carlos Boozer -- all have been All-Stars, and are back this year. Only Howard (41) has more double-doubles than Jefferson (34) this season.

More than that, the burly 6-foot-10 forward has labored in the low post without many outside shooters to draw away defenders. And as the centerpiece on Minnesota's side to its trade of Kevin Garnett, Jefferson has been everything the Wolves hoped, even faring well in direct comparisons to Garnett that, a few months ago, might have been unfair to the 23-year-old. He has no control over who the other four guys are on the floor with him, couldn't dictate where he was traded and couldn't designate the stage in its life cycle where his new team would be (building, contending or rebuilding). Yet he has thrived.

Defensively, sure, Jefferson (largely playing out of position at center) needs work and focus. But we're talking about THE ALL-STAR GAME HERE, WHEN DEFENSE TAKES A LONG WEEKEND IN CANCUN, TOO!

Still, Jefferson won't be in New Orleans; he'll be home in Mississippi (a modest drive away, it should be noted, in the event commissioner David Stern needs an 11th-hour injury replacement for the West).

Let's pause here for a few disclaimers: None of this is important in the grand scheme. Can anyone even remember, off the top of their heads, which side won the 2002 All-Star Game, what the score was, where it was played and who was named MVP? OK, for the record it was the West, 135-120, at Philadelphia, with Kobe Bryant scoring 31 points. But did you recall that no East starter scored more than eight points that day? And can you tell us who was selected as a reserve rather than an injury replacement? See, this stuff gets recorded on Etch-A-Sketches, not chiseled in marble.

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