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No All-Star start as Westbrook snubbed
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OKLAHOMA City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook is averaging a league-best 30.6 points per game this season but was a conspicuous absentee from the starting lineups announced by the National Basketball Association on Thursday for next month’s All-Star Game.
Instead of Westbrook, Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry and James Harden of the Houston Rockets were selected as the starting guards for the Western Conference in voting by fans, current players and the media.
Curry, the league’s Most Valuable Player in 2015 and 2016, will make his fourth All-Star appearance while Harden, averaging 28.9 points this season, gets the nod for a fifth time.
Curry won a tiebreaker to join Golden State teammate Kevin Durant in the lineup for the All-Star Game, while LeBron James and Kyrie Irving also gave the Cleveland Cavaliers two starters.
The other Western Conference starters were Kawhi Leonard of the San Antonio Spurs and New Orleans Pelicans big man Anthony Davis. Durant, a seven-time All-Star, is averaging 26.2 points and a career-high 8.6 rebounds this season while Leonard, Defensive Player of the Year in 2015 and 2016, is averaging a career-best 24.8 points for the Spurs.
The rest of the East lineup for the February 19 game at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, is Giannis Antetokounmpo of Milwaukee and Jimmy Butler of Chicago in the frontcourt and DeMar DeRozan of Toronto in the backcourt. He beat out Boston’s Isaiah Thomas in another tiebreaker.
James, who led the Cavaliers to a comeback win over the Warriors from a 1-3 deficit in the 2016 NBA Finals, is averaging 25.6 points this season, and will be making his 13th All-Star appearance.
Fan voting accounted for 50 percent in the new system, while players and a media panel each made up 25 percent.
James and Durant had the highest possible scores across all three voting groups, but the new process eliminated Chicago’s Dwyane Wade, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and Golden State’s Zaza Pachulia, who would have been elected by fans under the old format.
On the NBA courts, it was: Cavaliers 118, Suns 103; Heat 99, Mavericks 95; Wizards 113, Knicks 110; Spurs 118, Nuggets 104; and Timberwolves 104, Clippers 101.
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