Shredding any argument you think exists for Joe Johnson's All-Star candidacy
I remember thinking it to myself a couple times when cycling in my head through the likely All-Star candidacies of the various players in the Eastern Conference. You think about the teams that are doing well--because we all know, the All-Star Game is MEANT TO REWARD WINNING--and you think "OK, well obviously the Heat will have three guys, and the Pacers'll have two, and the Raptors and Bulls will each probably have one..." And then you get to the Nets, and figure they have a bunch of famous dudes and a not-awful record, so maybe they'll get a rep. And you think, "Well, Brook is the obvious guy, but he's out for the season. And Deron is maybe their best guy, but he's missed a bunch of games too, and his stats aren't good enough to make up for it. Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett were both terrible for the first two months of the season. So that just leaves...wait, no they wouldn't...not again...no way...they wouldn't, would they??"
They would. They did.
When the Eastern Conference All-Star Reserves were announced last night, there were the usual petty squabbles to be had with some of the names mentioned, especially considering some of the names not mentioned. But really, there was only one guy announced whose name deserved--nay, required--outright mockery. And that name would be the most appropriately bland moniker in the NBA, that of Nets shooting guard Joe Johnson.
Joe Johnson is not having a good year on the basketball court. He's not having a terrible year either, exactly, but looking at his Basketball-Reference page for this year, you'd have to squint at his numbers like George Costanza spotting raccoons on the highway to see them as anything but the mediocrest of mediocres. Here's his box-score stats for the season:
15.7 PPG, 3.4 RPG, 2.8 APG, 44% FG, 39% 3PT, 81% FT, 0.5 SPG, 0.2 BPG, 1.4 TOV
The points and assists per game are both his lowest since before Steve Nash got to Phoenix. The shooting percentages are about in line with his career averages, but pretty average for a half-decent two-guard when they're not used for volume scoring (And they're not mirages of playing fewer minutes, either--the numbers are still comparatively low when taken Per 36).
OK, so maybe you have to look behind the numbers a little, go to the advanced stats? Nope: His 14.7 PER is below league average, and his .089 Win Shares per 48 minutes ranks him just sixth among players who have received regular minutes on the Nets this season. His true shooting percentage of 55.3% is pretty good by his standards, but ranks below a plethora of other Eastern wings, including such All-Star unconsidereds as C.J. Miles, Ray Allen and Tim Hardaway Jr., as well as legitimate snubs like Lance Stephenson, Arron Afflalo and Kyle Lowry.
All right, so neither the shallow numbers or the deeper ones back up Joe Johnson's All-Star candidacy. But Joe Johnson's supporters--especially the three on Inside the NBA last night--would tell you that it's not about the stats. There are more legitimate, context-based reasons for why Joe Johnson should be an All-Star, and they aren't obvious just from the numbers, they'd say.
Well, I'm here to tell you: No. No, there aren't. There are no good reasons--not even any arguable bad reasons--why Joe Johnson should be on the Eastern Conference All-Star Team. And just in case you don't believe me, let's go through the borderline-conceivable arguments one could have for Joe Cool being an All-Star this year, and let's see how many of them actually hold up.
There's nobody in the league more clutch than Joe Johnson. We sure about that? Yeah, yeah, we've all seen the stats that circulated about a month ago about how money Joe Johnson is in the last ten seconds of games, but that data was not only taken from a ridiculously small sample size, it was also mostly based on data from last season's games, and regrettably, Joe's candidacy period for the 2013 All-Star Game has already passed.
If you take the term "clutch" in the broader sense--defining it, as most do, as the last five minutes of the ball game with neither team up by more than five points--then according to 82games, Joe Johnson is averaging 21.7 points per 48 minutes (which is pretty OK) but with an effective FG% of just 35.7% (which is definitely not pretty OK), while the team is a -17 overall over the sum of those clutch periods with Joe on the floor. And even going by more conventional stats, if Joe's such a lights-out closer, then why do the Nets have a losing record (7-8) in games decided by five points or less?
Basically, if you're giving Joe the All-Star nod based on this criteria, you're basically doing it for two shots--the buzzer-beating game-winners he hit this season against Phoenix and against Oklahoma City. And indeed, they were two nice shots, but are we really giving out All-Star spots to anybody who hits a pair of game-winners in the same season? If so, where the hell on the roster is Evan Turner, who has a couple walk-offs of his own against the Celtics and, indeed, against Joe Johnson's very own Nets? I DEMAND A RECOUNT.
Well, he's really put the Nets on his back since Brook Lopez went down. OH HAS HE? Brook suffered his broken foot in Philly on December 20th. Here's the stat line Joe posted in the 25 games he played prior to Brook's season-ending injury:
16.5 PPG, 3.4 RPG, 2.8 APG, 44.6% FG, 43% 3PT, 0.5 SPG, 0.3 BPG, 1.1 TOV
Got it? OK, now here's the stats he's put up in 17 games since for the Nets without Brook:
14.5 PPG, 3.5 RPG, 2.8 APG, 43.9% FG, 32% 3PT, 0.6 SPG, 0.0 BPG, 1.8 TOV
So...scoring less, shooting worse, and turning the ball over more is what constitutes putting a team on your back these days? If so, perhaps the Nets would like to find a sturdier back to place their team upon for the remainder of the season. How about Mason Plumlee? He's got them young back bones.
OK, but at least he's played a lot better since the Nets started winning, right? Nice try, but not really. If you count that OKC win as the turning point of the Nets season--including that game, they've gone 10-2 in their last 12--then here are Joe's stats over those dozen games:
16.2 PPG, 3.9 RPG, 3.1 APG, 46% FG, 35% 3PT, 0.7 SPG, 0.0 BPG, 1.7 TOV
If you want to hurt your eyes trying to figure out how that's different from his first 25 games of the year, I'll save you the trouble--he's rebounding and assisting incrimentally more, but scoring a little less, shooting way worse from three and turning the ball over a tad more. Really, it's the same stat line. They're all basically the same stat line. Joe Johnson is Joe Johnson, whether the Nets are losing, winning, injured, healthy, in a box, with a fox, whatever. And while that might've been a pretty cool thing in 2009, in 2014 it's slightly above average, tops.
All right, but you had to take someone from the Nets. Uhhhh why do we need to have a Net in this game, exactly? The Nets have been playing well in 2014, but they're still a 20-23 team that's failed spectacularly to meet pre-season expectations. Yes, they'd be in the playoffs in the crappy Eastern Conference, but only with the seventh seed. In the West, the overachieving Suns are the sixth seed with an actually good 28-18 record, and they didn't get an All-Star nod, despite the fact that they actually have a legitimate All-Star claim for breakout point guard Goran Dragic. Yet it's still incumbent upon the NBA to make sure this lousy Brooklyn squad gets a rep in this game? I didn't realize only games this calendar year were counted for All-Star voting.
There are no worthy All-Stars--healthy ones, anyway--on this Brooklyn Nets team. And that's OK! Sometimes, teams don't have All-Stars. It's a thing that happens, and usually people get over it. Hell, lest we forget, the only reason the Nets had an All-Star last year--when they actually had a pretty decent 26-16 record at the point of All-Star reserves being announced--was because Brook Lopez was named as an injury replacement when Rajon Rondo tore his ACL. If Joe Johnson didn't make the All-Star team for that squad with basically the same mediocre stats, why, pray tell, should he for this one?
C'mon, though, there's no one else to take in the East anyway. Are you kidding me?? No, the East hasn't been overflowing with elite individual play this season, but there were plenty of players that at least had a reasonable argument for All-Star status. Joseph Casciaro wrote about some snubs already today so I won't go too deep into them here, but I'll just say that if we're only going to count 2014 games--as we appear to be doing with Joe Johnson--then explain to me how we're not going to leave off Kyle Lowry, who's averaged a 19/5/8 on 46% shooting (both from the line and from deep) since New Year's, while the Raptors have gone 10-6, or Al Jefferson, who's scored 20 or more in his last 10 games and is averaging 23 and 11 for the year? Malarkey, I says.
Uhhh...it's a lifetime achievement award? How many lifetime achievement All-Star nominations does this guy need?? Do you realize this is the SEVENTH All-Star selection for Joe friggin' Johnson?? That's as many ASG appearances as were made by Walt Frazier, Jerry Lucas, Kevin McHale, James Worthy and Scottie Pippen, and more than Tommy Heinsohn, Adrian Dantley, Pete Maravich or Reggie Miller ever made. And for at least the last two before this one, it just felt like we were taking Joe Johnson because he'd been a bunch of times before and because nobody could think of anyone better to bring instead. (Though even the worst of his six All-Star bids in Atlanta was still infinitely more justifiable than this one.)
Seriously, guys. Joe Johnson's a nice player and all, very solid career, but he's not Dr. J. He's not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. We don't have to keep inviting him to these things until he retires. Just because he won't say no isn't a good enough reason to keep asking.
OK FINE LET'S JUST HAVE HIM IN THE GAME BECAUSE IT'LL BE FUNNY THAT HE'S THERE AND THE ALL-STAR GAME IS SILLY ANYWAY. OK, you got me there. I guess there is one good reason why Joe Johnson should be on the Eastern All-Stars, and that's because it'll be objectively hilarious to see him there alongside LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, trying not to look embarrassed. That's fair, and indeed, when I saw his name on the TNT broadcast, I did let out quite the hearty guffaw.
But c'mon, even if that really was the criteria the coaches used to select Joe Johnson, you know there are still more legitimately worthy candidates. Why not have our reigning Sixth Man of the Year J.R. Smith on the roster instead? What about bringing in Joe's old teammate Josh Smith to hoist some ill-advised threes? Hell, the East is short on bigs, why not dust off Andrew Bynum? Are there any rules specifically saying you actually have to be on an NBA team's roster to make the All-Star game? The possibilities are endless.
Really, there's one reason and one reason alone why Joe Johnson is in the All-Star Game this season: Laziness. Not Joe's--though you can make your own cracks there about Joe's motor with the Nets these last few years if you so desire--but that of the coaches who selected him. No coach who had actually done his homework, who had actually looked at even the most superficial of data (INCLUDING THE NETS' DAMN WIN-LOSS RECORD) could possibly have believed that Joe Johnson had a legitimate case to be an All-Star this year, because there's just no data on any level that exists to support such a claim.
Instead, the coaches probably did that thing where they scanned the records of the eight East teams who were currently ticketed for the playoffs, came across the Nets, remembered that Brooklyn had played well recently, faintly recalled one or two of the buzzer-beaters Johnson had hit this year (or perhaps a past big shot against their own team), tried and failed to name seven other good players on the other teams, and just checked the box next to his name, or whatever it is they do to vote in these things. That's the only explanation I can possibly think of, and it's a pretty unsatisfying one--one that makes you think that maybe the whole process has to somehow be rejiggered.
In a sense, this is nothing new, since it's practically a scheduled event of the All-Star period for us to have our gripes about who is and isn't selected to the game. But in every other case of a high-profile, controversial inclusion or snub that I can remember, it comes down to one of two types of players:
1. Player putting up so-so stats on a really good team
2. Player putting up really good stats on a so-so team
This is the first time I can remember that a player was selected for putting up so-so stats on a so-so team. And as much of an indictment as this may be on the Eastern Conference's current talent pool, it's a much bigger indictment of the people whose jobs it is to skim the very top of that pool so that at least the conference has its best possible representation come All-Star night. If that cream of the crop has to include Joe Johnson in the year 2014, I'm not really sure why we even bother.