Why the NBA needs to name more All-Stars, and how to do it

When voters for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame cast their ballots for the 2018 class, they'll be weighing the achievements of modern players against enshrinees from over 70 years of NBA history.

One yardstick used to measure nominees' careers is All-Star team selections. The game itself may be an ultimately pointless exhibition, but All-Star status holds disproportionate importance when it comes to evaluating a player's legacy. Being named among a handful of top players in any given year provides a simple testament to one's place in basketball lore.

It's apparently persuasive, too. Without including this year's crop of first-time nominees, only six eligible players with six or more All-Star selections are not currently in the Hall of Fame. No eligible player with at least nine All-Star appearances has ever been denied entry.

That's good news for future nominee Chris Bosh (11 All-Star selections), but much less encouraging for five-time All-Star Chauncey Billups.

(Photo courtesy: Action Images)

It's not impossible to make the Hall with five or fewer All-Star selections, but plenty of great, memorable players fitting that description - including Tim Hardaway Sr., Chris Webber, and Tom Chambers - have yet to receive the call. That reality could keep first-time nominee Billups up at night as he awaits a verdict on his own worthiness. After all, if Larry Costello - a staple of the All-Star Game in the 1950s - didn't get in, it's not inconceivable that Billups could suffer a similar fate.

Like Billups, six-time All-Star Costello was lauded as one of the best players in the league during the prime of his career - but unlike former Syracuse Nationals teammates Dolph Schayes and Hal Greer, he's nowhere near enshrinement in Springfield. (Costello is, however, in the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. So there's that.)

It quickly becomes evident that the weight of All-Star appearances has changed dramatically from generation to generation. The 1950s and '60s were a great time to be a good but unexceptional talent like Costello. From the All-Star Game in 1951 until 1960, there was a maximum of 10 teams in the NBA in any given season - and 10 All-Star selections per conference.

Costello made his fourth straight All-Star appearance in 1961 while averaging 14.5 points (fourth-best on the Syracuse Nationals), 5.7 assists, and 3.9 rebounds per game. In that edition, there were 22 All-Stars named from a pool of just eight teams.

Over the next 56 years, the league allowed a stark overcorrection. The number of teams increased steadily, while the number of All-Star berths barely changed. Since the NBA added its 30th franchise in 2005, there have been 24 All-Star berths - 12 per conference. The watered-down 2-to-1 ratio of All-Stars to teams in 1951 has become a 4-to-5 ratio today.

For some, it won't matter that Billups' accomplishment - five straight selections from 2006-10 - was far more difficult to achieve than Costello's reign in the '50s; the context will fade from memory. It's an accidental but egregious example of moving the goalposts (or rather, raising the rims).

Earning All-Star honors is more competitive than ever for today's overflowing pool of bona fide stars, and that becomes a serious problem when trying to contextualize a player's lasting legacy.

A quick fix

There's an easy solution to the All-Star berth dilemma: changing the current rules related to the replacement process.

When an honoree is forced to withdraw due to injury or personal reasons, commissioner Adam Silver selects their replacement. In every All-Star Game since 2006, at least one and as many as four players have been added in that role. Both the injured player and his replacement go down as All-Stars in the history books. For example, as his resume currently stands, Carmelo Anthony is a 10-time All-Star. It doesn't matter that his 2017 appearance was made possible by Kevin Love's late withdrawal.

Instead of waiting for the inevitable withdrawals, NBA coaches - responsible for voting in All-Star reserves - should select an additional pool of three replacement players per conference. These six would be named as All-Stars in the record books, and would have all the entitlements that go along with the designation at All-Star weekend, but they wouldn't play in the game itself unless called upon as injury replacements. That would make the ratio of berths to teams even at 1-to-1, but each conference's squad would still have just 12 active players on game day.

Here's how this proposed system could work for the Eastern Conference this season:

Walker, Dragic, and even Dinwiddie all arguably deserve All-Star status for their contributions this season, but are likely to be left out in the cold. Under this system, they'd be named as replacement All-Stars.

As an added bonus, every team in the East except the bottom-feeding Hawks, Magic, and Bulls would have at least one All-Star. The NBA doesn't need a baseball-style system mandating that every team has at least one honoree, but when merited, the more representation at All-Star weekend, the better.

This setup admittedly introduces some new wrinkles. Would players embrace being part of the festivities without any guarantee of actually suiting up in the big game, and how would this system impact current contracts that include specific bonus incentives for All-Star appearances? It seems likely, at least, that most players and teams would gladly chip in a little extra time and money for all the goodwill and marketing potential the "All-Star" label entails.

The proposal does, however, help address the All-Star bottleneck that looms next season, when Gordon Hayward and Isaiah Thomas will presumably be healthy from the get-go, John Wall could bounce back from a down year, and Ben Simmons will likely continue to blossom, further crowding an already packed field. If they play up to their usual high standards, how does excluding them from All-Star status benefit the league?

The NBA has a higher concentration of talent than ever before, and while there's certainly no need to return to 1950s ratios of two All-Stars per team, slightly expanding the pool of players today will help alleviate Hall of Fame debates surrounding players like Billups in the future. Even if the game itself has little meaning in the moment, the All-Star roster should be an accurate snapshot of the best players in the sport during a given season - and, as we learn every Hall of Fame voting season, these appearances matter in the long run.