Tag: Starters

After writing up the Western Conference portion of my official media ballot for the 2025 NBA All-Star Game on Wednesday, let’s do the same for the East.

(Quick refresher: You vote for three frontcourt players and two guards in each conference. Fan voting makes up 50% of the final result, with player and media ballots accounting for 25% each.)

All stats and records entering Thursday’s games.

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East All-Star starters

FC Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks

FC Jayson Tatum, Celtics

FC Karl-Anthony Towns, Knicks

G Jalen Brunson, Knicks

G Darius Garland, Cavaliers

The East’s best player: With apologies to Evan Mobley (whose name, spoiler alert, you’re about to see again in a few minutes) and Franz Wagner (who was playing at an All-NBA level before suffering the torn oblique that’s cost him the last six-plus weeks), I found the selection process for the Eastern frontcourt pretty easy, starting with Antetokounmpo, who’s been, for my money, the best player in the conference through the first half of the season.

He’s second only to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the league lead in scoring, fifth in rebounding and just outside the top 20 in assists per game, as the two-time MVP continues to refine his game by putting together the best playmaking season of his career. (Only Cade Cunningham, Chris Paul, Tyrese Haliburton and Trae Young have created more 3-pointers this season, according to PBP Stats.) He leads the NBA in points scored in the paint by more than 100 points; he is second in fast-break points, by six total points, to Christian Braun, who has played 155 more minutes. If Giannis decides he’s getting to the rim, he’s getting to the rim; all that’s left to determine is how much pain and embarrassment you experience in the process.

Milwaukee began the season flailing, stumbling out of the gates to a 2-8 record; the Bucks have the NBA’s third-best record and seventh-best net rating since, joining Oklahoma City, Boston and Memphis as the only teams to rank in the top seven on both offense and defense in that span. It’s not exactly as simple as Giannis effectively deciding, “Well, that’s enough of all that,” and then just changing everything … but it’s also not terribly far off from it. The list of players as adept as Antetokounmpo at bending an entire game to his will is either small enough to be counted on one hand, or it doesn’t exist. And if you don’t believe me, just ask SGA and the Thunder. The NBA Cup final might not count in the standings, but you can be damn sure they’re not going to forget what Giannis did in it anytime soon. The rest of us shouldn’t, either.

Joining Giannis up front: Tatum, who leads Boston in scoring, rebounds, assists and steals, continuing to put up monster numbers while pacing the-math-will-break-you offense and smothering, shapeshifting defense of the defending champion Celtics, who boast the NBA’s third-best record and net rating, and who have blitzed opponents by 11.2 points per 100 possessions with the soon-to-be six-time All-Star on the floor.

Over eight NBA seasons, plus an additional season-and-a-half’s worth of playoff games, Tatum has so finely tailored his game that it now appears nearly seamless. He ranges from good to fantastic at virtually every aspect of offense: from handling the ball in the pick-and-roll to setting screens for Boston’s guards to target a mismatch and put a smaller defender in the Walls of Jericho in the post; from spotting up on the weak side of the action to dotting a defender’s eye with a pull-up triple, which he’s done more often than any player save Anthony Edwards this season; from moving without the ball in the flow of Boston’s offense to walking down a defender in isolation, where he’s scoring 1.07 points per possession — 10th-best among players to finish at least 25 plays in iso, according to Synergy’s tracking. He brandishes all those weapons while ably transitioning into life as a point power forward, hauling in rebounds and dropping dimes at career-best rates, and capably guarding opponents of all shapes and sizes for a top-six defense.

Like the rest of the Celtics, Tatum’s shooting efficiency has tailed off a bit since the start of the season, when he looked like he might be poised to make an MVP run — and he’s still one of just 11 players scoring at least 25 points per game on above-average true shooting. The list looks a lot like an All-Star ballot … which makes sense, considering Towns and Brunson are both there.

New York’s deserving duo: Towns has served as a half-court decongestant whose ability to pull opposing centers out of the paint has helped create acres of space for his teammates to exploit, as well as an elite three-level scoring threat eminently capable of exploiting it himself, averaging 25.1 points per game on career-best .655 true shooting — something only eight players in NBA history have ever done for a full season. He’s also been dominant on the glass, leading the NBA in defensive rebounding rate and overall rebounding rate; he’s even provided improved rim protection since a rocky early start, holding opponents to a respectable 59.2% shooting at the cup since the start of December.

He’s been every ounce the transformational figure the Knicks hoped he’d be when they swung the mega-deal to import him on the eve of training camp — the best center in the conference and a tailor-made running buddy for Brunson, his partner in supercharging the NBA’s No. 2 offense. New York’s captain has authored a brilliant follow-up to last season’s All-Star and All-NBA breakthrough, averaging 26 points per game on sparkling 49/39/82 shooting splits to go with a career-high 7.3 assists per game.

Brunson is the stone-faced, stone-jawed, stone-shouldered on-court avatar of Tom Thibodeau, placidly and perpetually carving opponents up in the pick-and-roll, in isolation or when operating off the ball, producing 1.3 points per possession as a spot-up shooter — third best in the league among players to finish 100 such plays, behind only Michael Porter Jr. and, as luck would have it, Towns. It doesn’t seem like a player of Brunson’s dimensions and athletic profile should be able to consistently beat the kind of defenders he routinely sees … and then you watch him attack, take in the sum total of all those fakes, feints, jabs and sudden shifts in state, and you start wondering how anyone ever stays in front of him. (Only SGA drives to the basket more often.)

As has been the case ever since he arrived from Dallas, the Knicks go where Brunson goes. Good thing for them, then, that he goes pretty much wherever he damn well pleases.

That leaves one starting backcourt spot: With all due respect to Trae Young (leading the NBA in assists by nearly two dimes a night as the leader of the kind of stunningly seventh-seeded Hawks), Cade Cunningham (now breathing freely in a better-spaced offense and playing like exactly who he was drafted to be for the very stunningly sixth-seeded Pistons) and several other Eastern guards having excellent seasons, it’s got to go to one of the members of the league-leading, defense-destroying 36-7 Cavaliers.

I think it’s going to go to Donovan Mitchell: Cleveland’s leading scorer and signature superstar, demonstrating admirable leadership through his willingness to take a step back, with his minutes, shot attempts, touches, time of possession and usage rate all at or near career lows. And that’d be perfectly fine. But while I’d agree that Mitchell is the Cavs’ best player, I think it’s reasonable to believe that Garland has had the team’s best season — a bounce-back campaign coming off a disastrous 2023-24 that has seen the about-to-turn-25-year-old remind the NBA-watching world that he’s one of the brightest lights in it.

Garland has shot and scored more efficiently than Mitchell — he is literally two made field-goal attempts and, after an uncharacteristically errant night from the charity stripe against the Rockets on Wednesday, four made free throws away from being the only player in the NBA this season on pace to join the 50/40/90 club — while also curbing his turnover rate despite posting his highest usage rate since Mitchell arrived in Cleveland. He’s outpacing Mitchell in a slew of all-in-one metrics — estimated plus-minus, value over replacement player, player efficiency rating, box plus-minus, win shares — while ranking among the league’s best crunch-time performers, scoring 58 points in 52 “clutch” minutes on 20-for-31 shooting (64.5%) with 10 assists against just two turnovers. Last season, Cleveland went from hammering opponents when Mitchell played without Garland to getting outscored when Darius ran the show. This season, though, the Cavs have been nearly as dominant in Garland-only minutes — one huge reason why they’ve been so relentlessly, historically excellent.

It’s reasonable to argue that Garland’s only been able to play this freely and brilliantly because of the attention that Mitchell demands … but I think it’s also reasonable to counter that Mitchell’s only been able to comfortably take a step back because of just how overwhelming Garland has been. Both deserve to represent Cleveland at Chase Center; to me, though, it felt appropriate to give Garland the slight edge in recognition of just how far he’s come since this time last season, and just how high the Cavs have soared as a result.

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East All-Star reserves

Whew. OK. Now that I’ve explained my choices for the part of this exercise that counts, let’s pivot to the portion that doesn’t: who I’d pick as reserves to round out the East’s roster.

Remember: While fans, players and media members vote on starting lineups, NBA coaches alone decide the makeup of each conference’s bench. To the extent that what I think ever matters, it doesn’t count for squat here. Which, if I’m being honest: Pretty liberating!

Here are the seven players — three frontcourt players, two guards, and two “wild cards,” which can come from either group — that I’d pick to complete the East roster:

FC Evan Mobley, Cavaliers

FC Pascal Siakam, Pacers

FC Jaylen Brown, Celtics

G Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers

G Cade Cunningham, Pistons

WC Trae Young, Hawks

WC Damian Lillard, Bucks

No-brainers: Mitchell — nearly as productive and efficient as ever on a per-minute, per-possession basis, the leading scorer for the best team in the East — an easy pick for a reserve guard spot. His teammate, Mobley, whose case for inclusion as a first-timer I recently laid out, also snags one of the frontcourt spots.

New head coach Kenny Atkinson has empowered the fourth-year forward to do more of everything for the revamped Cavs, and the result has been career-best scoring volume and efficiency to go with now-customary elite rim protection, switchability and all-around defensive smothering. That all adds up to a top-15-to-20 two-way player in the eyes of all-in-one metrics like estimated plus-minus, player efficiency rating, win shares, box plus-minus and value over replacement player — the kind of résumé that, when you’re also the starting 4 for a team flirting with a 70-win pace, gets you a ticket to the show.

I also recently laid out the case for Cunningham, before going into it in much greater detail with Tom Haberstroh on an episode of The Big Number:

Cunningham’s 15th in the NBA in scoring and third in assists; the only other player in the NBA scoring, rebounding and assisting at the rates Cade has this season is Nikola Jokić. He’s third in the NBA in true usage — a stat developed by author and former Milwaukee Bucks staffer Seth Partnow that looks at players’ shot attempts, assist opportunities, turnovers and total possessions played; a way to measure their total offensive involvement and the size of their role — for a team that scores at an above-average clip when he’s on the court and at a near-Wizardian rate without him. The Pistons, a laughingstock for the better part of the last 15 years, enter Thursday in sixth in the East; it’s one of the cooler stories in the sport this season, and Cunningham is the driving force behind it. He’s in.

Right above Detroit in the middle of the Eastern standings? The Pacers, who’ve been one of the hottest teams in the NBA for the last six weeks, and while other players (namely Tyrese Haliburton and Andrew Nembhard) might be more central to that surge, it’s Siakam who has been Indiana’s most consistently excellent performer since the season’s opening tip.

Siakam’s averaging a team-high 20.1 points and 7.3 rebounds per game on career-best shooting — 75% at the rim, 48% from midrange, 41% from 3-point land — while virtually never losing the ball. (Among 105 players who use at least 20% of their team’s offensive possessions, Siakam has the second-lowest turnover rate — a microscopic 6.9% — behind only old Raptor buddy Chris Boucher.) A player who entered the NBA as a gangly ball of energy out of New Mexico State, subsisting on energy and broken plays, has become a high-end operator adept at punishing defenses all over the court — working in isolation, screening and short-rolling, filling the lane in transition, or, his bread and butter, taking defenders down into the post.

[Check out Devine’s West All-Stars]

When you factor in possessions where he draws help and passes out rather than shooting himself, Siakam’s post-ups have produced nearly 1.17 points per possession for the Pacers, according to Synergy — a rate of scoring efficiency that sits right between SGA and Jokić — with the Pacers routinely generating good looks when they try to work through him to the block (even if he doesn’t necessarily get the look himself). The value of his size and versatility extends to the other end of the court, too: A Pacers team that has struggled mightily at times to match up with big wings and get stops has defended at a near top-five level with Siakam on the floor. Haliburton determines Indiana’s ceiling, but for the first three months of this season, Siakam has established its consistently competitive floor with perpetually high-end two-way play; that, too, is a version of stardom, and it’s one that I think merits an All-Star spot.

For the final frontcourt reserve spot: I went with Brown, the reigning Eastern Conference Finals MVP and NBA Finals MVP, who — even in a down year shooting the ball — remains a vital No. 2 option on the second-best team in the conference.

Brown opened up the season misfiring, but he has averaged 23 points per game on 47/35/75 shooting splits for the last 30 games. He’s posting career-high assist and free-throw attempt rates, marrying an increased playmaking role — especially out of the post, where Joe Mazzulla will often use him as a mismatch weapon against smaller defenders to pry open great looks — with his solemn duty to bring juice and inject an element of randomness into Boston’s attack with his slashing and end-to-end forays on the break. The Celtics score 14.4 more points per 100 possessions in transition with Brown on the court than off it, field a top-six defense with him taking on some of the toughest assignments in the league night to night and have remained elite in non-Tatum minutes when Brown’s there to anchor the attack. The advanced metrics have never totally loved Brown’s production, but his importance to the defending champs’ operations on both ends of the court earns him a spot on my bench.

The last two: That leaves me with a whole bunch of players for the wild-card spots. One went to Young, whose 11.6 assists per game, again, leads the NBA by nearly two dimes per game — and is on pace to be a top-25 assist season of all time.

He’d be even higher on that list if teammates like rookie Zaccharie Risacher, Dyson Daniels, De’Andre Hunter and the recently frigid Bogdan Bogdanović could convert a few more of his feeds. Young’s averaging 21 potential assists per game, which would be the fourth-highest total of anyone to play at least half a season in the player-tracking era, behind only peak Houston James Harden, and the weird fever dreams that were Rajon Rondo: Sacramento King and Russell Westbrook: Washington Wizard.

Young’s own scoring efficiency has tailed off — he’s shooting a career-low percentage on 2-pointers, thanks largely to a dip on the typically money floaters with which he’s long tortured dropping bigs — but he remains one of the NBA’s premier manipulators of a defense, and among the league’s most bankable offensive engines. According to the Points Created metric introduced by Zach Kram of The Ringer, Young’s generating 52.5 points per 36 minutes of floor time for the Hawks this season — more than any player in the league besides Jokić, Giannis and SGA. A revamped Atlanta roster that ranks among the youngest in the NBA scores at a top-10 clip when Young’s at the controls and is very much in the thick of the race for a top-six spot in the East due in large part to the fact that he operates on the ball as effectively as any player in the NBA.

For the last spot, we’ll go with Lillard, who’s been better across the board in his second season in Milwaukee, bumping his midrange and long-distance efficiency back up to their customarily excellent marks while developing even better chemistry with Antetokounmpo in the two-man game and getting increasingly comfortable working off the ball (a little) more often.

Amid a group of worthy and tightly bunched candidates who all kind of rock-paper-scissors’d their way through the advanced metrics — this guy’s ahead of the rest in VORP, but this other guy has the edge in EPM! and so on — I decided to go with the dude who’s averaging 25 and 7 on .623 true shooting for a team in line for home-court advantage in Round 1. Reasonable people can differ, but I don’t think I’d lose sleep over that one … and, since I don’t actually pick the reserves, you shouldn’t, either.

Apologies to: Jarrett Allen, Tyrese Haliburton, Tyler Herro, Zach LaVine, Josh Hart, Jalen Johnson, Nikola Vučević, Derrick White, Tyrese Maxey, LaMelo Ball.