Sacramento Kings v Philadelphia 76ers
A lot of eyebrows went up around the NBA when the Timberwolves Karl-Anthony Towns was named an All-Star reserve. In the minds of many, KAT was behind a few players on the All-Star list, including his teammate Rudy Gobert.
The biggest snub was the Sacramento Kings — the fifth-seed team in the West didn’t get one All-Star despite having two legitimate candidates in De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis. Fox is averaging 27.2 points and 5.5 assists a game and driving the Sacramento offense. Meanwhile, Sabonis has averaged nearly a triple-double — 19.9 points, 13 rebounds, and 8 assists per game — and has 42 double-doubles in 46 games.
Kings coach Mike Brown vented about his stars not getting an All-Star invite to Marc Spears of ESPN’s Andscape.
“It’s clear to anyone who watches the NBA and Kings basketball that De’Aaron and Domantas should have been selected for this year’s All-Star game,” Kings coach Mike Brown told Andscape. “They are playing at an unbelievably elite level, Domantas establishing historic numbers with his double-doubles and De’Aaron setting a new career mark for 3-point field goals. Every year, there are deserving players left off the team but, to me, this is truly a glaring wrongdoing.”
Brown isn’t wrong, but the question is who to remove to make room for one of his guys. Good players get left off the All-Star team every year, and there are more deserving players than the 12 roster spots (the league should up that to 15 spots, the same as a game-day roster). You can argue that Sabonis or Fox should have been in over Towns, but that would leave the team with the best record in the West having only one All-Star (Anthony Edwards). That’s why many people expected Gobert — the anchor of the league’s best defense — to get the final spot. Instead, the coaches — who vote on the reserves — went with Towns.
I can’t blame Brown for backing up his guys, and you can’t say he’s wrong. It’s also not changing anything.
One of them may get in as an injury replacement, should that need arise in the West (already in the East it appears there will be two with Joel Embiid and Julius Randle named to the team but injured and out).
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