Chapter 1: What are the biggest debates around All-Star selections?
Hello and welcome to Group Chat. I am Justin Verrier and joining me, Rob Mahoney, J. Kyle Mann. Guys, the Jonathan Kaminga watch is on every hour on the hour. We're going to check in on the hottest name on the trade market. First up, Rob, Jonathan Kaminga, is he a good player or not?
I'm going to go respectfully, probably not.
At least in any meaningful way. We'll check in an hour from now just to see if it's still the same thing.
Chapter 2: Who are the top Eastern Conference All-Star picks?
Frankly, my butt hurts from sitting on the pins and needles. I need a break. It's agonizing.
For the record, him not being a good player does not mean we can't do a 24-hour telethon to rehome him wherever it is that he would like to go.
Well, we'll check in an hour from now to see if he is still indeed not that good and thus not important enough to talk about. But today's adventure is more about the good players in the league, the all-stars. We're going to pick our all-star ballots and go over specifically the biggest tension points. of the debate process. Unless you guys have anything else you want to get off your chest?
Rob has some ferns in the background.
Well, I'm becoming a plant guy in my advanced age. You know, we need to find new challenges. We need to find things that we can embrace that will force us to evolve. And in my history, I've killed basically every plant I have tried to raise. So we're coming back to it. You know, we're, we're turning over new leaves, so to speak.
That was good. Nice. Thank you on there. Thank you. Are we going to do Justin? Are we going to be like massaging these points of tension out? Is that kind of what you're getting at? That this is a, you know, we're doing like an, an all-star spa kind of thing. I don't know. All of us together. Three dudes massaging thing.
Yeah. Or maybe like an after dark sort of thing. If you want to get into that.
Sure. Massaging after dark.
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Chapter 3: What are the highlights of the Western Conference All-Star picks?
That's what the people that might change our classification on Netflix, but.
Honestly, we've not been thinking enough about that. Like, how do we get into a weird subcategory? You know, like the moody thrillers starring Oscar nominees. Like, how do we get into that subcategory? What needs to happen?
Maybe a little anime action. There's just a real dust anime section.
13 reasons why Pascal Siakam is not on the...
Well, I know how you guys felt about this, but I would say this was a relatively easy exercise for like 90% of it. But the last 10% was excruciating. I felt like there was like a handful of spots that were just pretty difficult. Do you find like that was because, Rob, of maybe them switching up the way we do this now? Because now it's positionless. Did that affect you at all?
I think when there were designated positions, it just made certain things impossible. Like you would just have to accept that certain guys that might deserve it aren't going to make it because there aren't enough wildcard spots and the positions don't quite shake out the way they need to. That was a fact of life.
Now that there's no excuses and it's just like, who are the 12 guys who are having the best season or the 12 best players or however you want to look at it.
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Chapter 4: How does Devin Booker make his All-Star case?
It streamlines the process, but I think it creates different areas where now it's challenging. Now, all of a sudden, like I'm really fretting over starter versus reserve for that like final spot. I think some of those deliberations honestly were as hard as anything else.
In terms of the positionless thing, whenever I hear people fret over this and debate and go back and forth, it's like, I just think that as the facilitator, initiator, handler, all these other words that we have kind of come up with to replace the fact that we just don't have pure point guards in the NBA anymore, they're at other levels, but they're
Not in the NBA because skill has just migrated over the other positions and size subsets that I think it's justified to go away from it. We end up with some conversations about players who are accessories to winning in a way where we enter these interesting conversations about impact.
And I think we'll get into some of these guys who have different roles away from initiators and how do we properly value them against others. you know, initiators, handlers on teams that aren't as good. I just think that it kind of, but I like the starter thing too. I guess, I don't know.
The starter thing is also, we're doing it purely on merit and there's also all the other kind of factors that enter into it about like popularity, you know, it's just criteria can differ from person to person.
Right. So the way that they actually do this is it's still what?
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Chapter 5: What factors influence Kawhi Leonard's All-Star selection?
Like a percentage of fan votes, a percentage of media votes, percentage of player votes for the starters?
I believe so. And then the reserves are still selected by the coaches.
Okay, and the added wrinkle on top of this is after all of these players are selected, rosters are finalized, injury replacements are chosen, then they are separated into three teams, one of which is all international players.
I caught Donovan Mitchell on some sort of, I think it was like the NBA Instagram or something, doing a whole bit about how his grandmother came over from Panama and thus he sees himself as Panamanian. And I was like, oh shit, we're in for some real fudging. I was like, who's in this international mix?
Chapter 6: Will LeBron James make a late push for the All-Star game?
I mean, there is a lot of self-identification happening, and there's so many players, too. It's like grew up internationally but came to play college basketball in America or vice versa. And how you classify those guys, honestly, anybody's best guess. Carl Anthony Towns, how would he be designated per these rules?
I have no earthly idea, but I guess Adam Silver is going to be tasked with figuring that out.
Cat kind of fired his bullet trying to play, playing for the Dominican thing. And it was like, and then there was the whole Calipari thing to it too. And it's like, you know, he's wanting to go back. It's that wasn't, that's an interesting case.
Do you guys, we're all, we're all of the age that you might remember this, but do you all remember like in the late nineties when McDonald's had the all-star ballots, like the printed ballots at the stores? Do you all remember this?
Chapter 7: What rising candidates are being overlooked for the All-Star game?
Oh yeah.
Real hanging Chad situation. A lot of, you know, a lot of room to really work the ballots if you want to. I remember I was in such a desert of enthusiasm for the NBA because I'm from college basketball country. And people were just like, oh, God, you still hear some of that stuff? But I remember I grabbed a gigantic – I was so excited about it.
I grabbed a gigantic stack of them and took them to school, to my friends, to even my team, my coaches. And I remember one of my friends distinctly saying, nobody gives a shit about that, dude. I was like – I just – Kyle's like, no, Jamal Mashburn deserves to be there.
Chapter 8: How do international players factor into the All-Star selections?
It's just such a... Yeah, I was going to say.
No, Sean Kemp still got it, you know? Do you remember the era? Like, yeah. Who are we talking about in terms of players? Like, who are you excited to put on there?
I think it was 1997-ish. I think it was like the Cleveland. Wasn't that in Cleveland? Anyway, it's a core memory, like a traumatic, like, oh, like, I'm a little more into this than the normal kid my age. I don't know. But anyway. Yeah. That's why you're here now.
That's why we're here now trying to suss all this shit out together, punching our digital hanging chads. It all paid off. It all paid off.
So any other stipulations we need to account for? I feel like there's always like two to four different roles that they just kind of just assume and then they deal with it later.
I don't think there's any other official stipulations other than, Justin, with the format you described, American versus international players, there will be some adjustment of additional players if they don't meet the eight and... Wait, is it eight and 16? How many do we need? Yeah.
So it's 12 and 12 on East and West, and then it's divvied up from there. I've already heard from people rolling their eyes, basically suggesting that Adam Silver is going to take whoever gets voted in and basically fudge them into certain categories based off of things like Donovan Mitchell saying that he's Panamanian, even though he was born in the United States. So strap in for that, basically.
I think I have seven.
Yeah.
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