Who could be a first-time NBA All-Star in the East?
By Jared Dubin
Which Eastern Conference players could make their first NBA All-Star team this season?
The starters for the 2020 NBA All-Star Game were announced on Thursday night, and among the group of 10 players were three players who will be making their All-Star debuts: Trae Young and Pascal Siakam in the East, and Luka Doncic in the West.
Any first-timers starting the All-Star Game is pretty rare. None of the 10 starters in last season’s game were players making their first All-Star appearance, and of the 200 All-Star starters from 2000 through 2019, only 13 of them were making their maiden voyage to the game. Three first-timers starting the game? That actually hasn’t happened this millennium — until now. (There hadn’t even been multiple first-timers starting since all the way back in 2003.)
This year’s crop has a nice head start thanks to the trio of starters, but that crew is highly unlikely to be alone. There are a whole bunch of players from each conference who can make reasonable cases that they should be invited. Alas, there are not likely to be enough roster spots available for all of them. So, let’s walk through a few of the candidates and weigh the arguments for each.
We’ll continue below with the East.
Bam Adebayo, Miami Heat
Teammate Jimmy Butler is pretty confident Bam will get into the game, and he should be. This is one of just three NBA players averaging at least 10 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 steal per game, and one of five averaging at least 10 rebounds and 4 assists.
In the long history of the league, only 10 other players have averaged at least 15 points, 10 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 1 steal, and 1 block per game: Kevin Garnett, Chris Webber, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, DeMarcus Cousins, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Dave Cowens, David Robinson, and Bill Walton. That’s some pretty good company to keep.
Bam’s a solid screener both on and off the ball, and one of the league’s best lob targets. He has maintained his strong rebounding numbers across the board, he’s a terror in passing lanes and as a back line helper, and he is both getting to the free-throw line and setting up his teammates for easy looks more than ever before. He has also become a dominant finisher on the inside (he’s shooting nearly 75 percent on shots within three feet of the basket), a strong playmaker on short rolls and from the post, and a vital connecting hub for Miami’s dribble hand-off heavy offense.
Domantas Sabonis and Malcolm Brogdon, Indiana Pacers
If forced to choose between these two, I’d lean toward Sabonis. He’s been available more often than Brogdon, who has missed time due to injury, and he has maintained a more consistent level of play throughout the year. But they’re both worthy candidates.
Sabonis is one of the aforementioned five players averaging at least 10 rebounds and 4 assists per game. He has become the Pacers’ highest-usage player, and he is absolutely punking people both on the block and in mid-post isolations from the wing or the free-throw line. Indiana’s offense simply would not work without him. He is crushing the boards on both ends of the floor.
His versatility is nearly unmatched right now. He’s on track to become one of seven players ever to post at least a 20 percent usage, 20 percent total rebound rate, and 20 percent assist rate.
Sabonis has also improved defensively, which has made the tandem of him and Myles Turner more workable than expected. His arms are still too short for him to be a high-level rim protector, but his work on the glass and in space have made him something closer to a neutral force than he has been in the past.
Brogdon started off the season like gangbusters, but injuries dragged down his level of performance a bit. It’s especially notable in his shooting numbers, where he is now posting a career-low true shooting percentage. (He’s struggling at the rim and from 3 but on fire from everywhere else.) But Brogdon’s contributions have still been enormous, as he’s one of only a few Pacer players capable of breaking down a defense off the dribble and creating for someone other than himself.
He’s jacked up his assist rate to a career-best 36 percent, and he’s chipped in on the defensive glass more than ever before as well. His combination of size and strength makes him an extremely versatile defender, which allows him to fit next to any of Indiana’s other guards — Jeremy Lamb, Aaron and Justin Holiday, T.J. McConnell — in the backcourt. He probably falls just short here, but he deserves mention nonetheless.
Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics
Forced to choose between these two, I probably couldn’t, to be honest.
Brown has taken a significant step forward as a scorer, posting career highs in both usage and true shooting. He’s done so while keeping his turnover rate down and bumping his assist rate north. His nearly 39 percent clip from beyond the arc represents a big step up over last season’s struggles, and it’s come while he’s shot more from deep than ever before.
He’s also continued to improve as a finisher and mid-range shooter, using his size and strength to bully smaller defenders and his speed and athleticism to smoke quicker ones off the bounce. He’s been a key connective piece for Boston’s lineups, and has remained a solid defender across multiple positions.
As big a step forward as Brown has taken offensively, Tatum has taken one defensively. He deserves legitimate consideration for an All-Defensive team. He avoids fouling. He cuts off driving lanes and jumps into passing lanes. He knows where to be and when and why, and what to do when he gets there. He’s always in the right position. He’s bumped his rebound, steal, and block rates to career highs, a strong indicator of his work rate on that end.
His offense has been a bit more up and down, and his occasional tendency for extreme outlier bad performances is probably the reason to pick Brown over him if it comes down to that. But he is still a good three-level scorer, an improving passer, and a willing, above-average outside shooter. Everything that people have been seeing that tells them Tatum has Future Star written all over him has been there this year. It just needs to be there every night for it to really happen for him.