Why Mike Conley should have made the 2017 NBA All-Star team
He deserves to shed the ‘underrated’ label
Is it oxymoronic for the player with the richest contract in league history to still be dubbed “underrated” in some circles? Not when it comes to Conley.
“At first, it didn’t faze me at all, and then I got better and better as each year went on and I felt like I deserved a little more,” Conley told Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune in November. “I never kind of got that spotlight—and rightfully so, because there are so many good point guards in the West.”
While the point about his competition out West is valid—good luck outshining Paul, Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook—Conley has been deserving of more national recognition for years. In a January 2015 article for Grantland, Jonathan Abrams argued as much, writing, “He is one of the league’s best orchestrators for one of the league’s best teams, and he serves as the guiding, steadying influence on an emotional roster.”
In the two years since, nothing about that sentiment has changed. Last season, the Grizzlies had a net rating of plus-1.6 with Conley on the court as opposed to the minus-6.4 they posted with him on the bench. The difference hasn’t been as profound this year—they have a plus-1.4 with him on the court and a minus-0.6 with him off—but he remains a two-way fulcrum for the never-say-die Grit-and-Grind Grizzlies and has them headed toward their seventh straight playoff berth.
Though Conley’s place in Memphis franchise history is long secure, he recognizes the lack of All-Star appearances could affect his legacy down the line.
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“There’s a little bit of that respect that’s left out there,” Conley told ESPN.com’s Ramona Shelburne. “Like if you could just make it, you know, get that under your belt, get that label, that people would respect you more. Because people will always say, ‘He never made that, he never did that, he can’t be as good as this person or that person.'”
Unfortunately, Conley must now wait at least one more year for that type of validation.