Thread by @KornHoops

Coaches vote on All Star today, so I'll put mine out & thread some final thoughts. As a consideration, for the purposes of AS team, I tend to value guys floor-raising teams just a hair more than playoff ceiling raisers for AS specifically, something that differs for All-NBA...

As a regular season, in-season award, being a really high-value guy on a team that can win the championship is more important in the overall basketball sense, but I personally separate that from the individual, AS worthy performances of a 30 game sample (more on this later)...

This is not who I think will make it, it is who I personally would have voted for:

West Starters (Decided): Steph, Luka, Bron, Kawhi, Jokic

My West Reserves: Dame, PG, Gobert, AD (injury replacement inbound), Zion, SGA, Booker...

The Last 2 Sports were between 6 guys that I kind of agonized over: SGA/Booker & then Conley, Fox, Mitchell, & CP3. Fox has cooled off over the last 10-12 days or else he probably grabs that spot for me. It kills me to leave Conley off the team given his remarkable season...

but I am ultimately rewarding SGA & Booker who are asked to do a lot more for their teams respectively for the ASG. Mitchell off is probably the most surprising given so many people are pretending he is in the MVP race on TV. He's an awesome player to watch, I just think...

there are an absolute ton of guards that put up exactly what he does in Utah with Utah's talent around him. He's the 5th best defensive player in the Jazz starting lineup (when Ingles is in instead of Bojan) & I find too many games where I feel like he chucks bad shots at...

expense of the defense. Its weird to have the league's best team right now with 1 AS, but that team more then any other in recent memory (since Bud ATL) feels like a collection of good to very good players making it go....

It is also worth noting that I think Ingles & Bojan are really really good & that Clarkson is the leagues best bench player. Caveat, if CJ stays healthy he would have been a LOCK...

East Starters (Decided): Kyrie, Beal, KD, Giannis, Embiid.

My East Reserves: Harden, Middleton, Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Bam, Simmons, Zach Lavine.

Once again, those first 5 feel really easy to me. The last 2 were tricky but for me personally, Simmons is a no brainer as well...

His stat-line is so much less sexy then about 8 other choices in the East, which kind of sums up the entire experience of Ben Simmons. His impact is really hard to quantify in the traditional box-score. The guy has been a flat out menace defensively, especially of late...

& its hard for me to find too many better, more versatile players on that end in the league right now. The last spot in the East was by far the toughest. I had 8 guys: Lavine, Trae Young, Randle, Vuc, Sabonis, FVV, Hayward, Brogdon that I took a good hard look at...

As was covered in a bunch of different great pieces this year, the offensive explosion in the NBA has led to a ton of "no player has ever missed the AS team averaging this" graphs (including some created by me). Every single one of these dudes had a phenomenal statistical case...

for inclusion on the team. So with that, I went with what my eyes have been seeing this year & gave the very slight lean to Zach Lavine over Trae Young. Yes, Lavine's D remains somewhat problematic. But I'd be hard pressed to say I've seen 6-7 scarier scorers in the entire NBA...

this year then him. His shooting splits on his type of volume has been insane & is improvement has legitimately turned me around more than any player I've ever watched. The bonus is that although he isn't a Trae level playmaker, he has 100% made significant strides in that area..

Leaving Trae off (for now), was one of the tougher calls in a while. He quite literally is the ATL offense, is a far better passer then Lavine, & is similarly asked to everything. I went with Lavine b/c I genuinely think averages aside, Lavine has just been more consistent...

game in & game out. The last part of this is AD is going to miss the game, which means we will be getting an AS replacement. The AS replacement spot to me comes down to 2 players, Trae Young & Mike Conley, another brutal call given the varying differences in their circumstance...

Conley sees nearly all of his minutes played with Gobert. In games they've both played, only 99 of Conley's 700 minutes have come with Rudy off the floor. That stagger has worked brilliantly, but its worth discussing whether Conley's absurd on/off splits are in large part...

just due to that pairing. On the flipside, ATL goes as Trae Young goes. Capela has been awesome & Hunter was certainly on a major upward trajectory pre-injury, but for the most part, the burden of success lands on the shoulders of Trae Young. For All-NBA, this may be a diff...

in referring back to an earlier voting philosophy part of this tweet, I tend to value guys raising their teams floor for the AS game, whereas I tend to value ceiling-raisers a little bit more for All-NBA & overall player evaluations. UTA would get worse swapping Conley for Trae..

and in the general course of NBA value, UTA is the team with actual title aspirations so this swap would feel more valuable. With that, the actual heavy-lifting Trae is doing carries the most water for me here & so I give him the slight edge over Mike....

Thats it for the AS picks, feel free to air all grievances / express displeasure.

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