The creation of the NBA Cup has created a relatively clean divide in the season’s schedule. The first third or so of the season is built around the Cup. The last third is the playoff push. But that middle third? That’s the build up to All-Star, the point in the season in which we start to seriously evaluate the league’s best players and reconsider the hierarchy.
The All-Star format this year is going to be different. Rather than two teams, the NBA is dividing 24 All-Stars into three, and they, along with the winning team from the Rising Stars Challenge, will duke it out in a four-team tournament. We’re still more than a month away from the actual selection of 2024-25 All-Stars, but now that the Cup is in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start considering who’s going to be playing in San Francisco in February.
To that end, we’re going to pick All-Star teams for both conferences based on the two-month sample we currently have. The goal of this exercise will be to choose the 12 players who I expect to deserve selection when the real teams are chosen based on their performance so far. This means that I will not be beholden to anticipated voting results, but that injuries that will likely cost a player too many games will ultimately count.
Essentially, if things continue on their current path, these would be the 12 players I would select in each conference. We’ll be retaining the typical roster format: two guards and three frontcourt players starting, the same split on the bench for the first five reserve slots, and then, for the last two, anything goes. We’re tackling the Eastern Conference today and the West tomorrow, so without further ado, let’s dive right in.
Starters
Let’s start with our two no-brainers. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jayson Tatum are the East’s two somewhat viable MVP candidates at this point. There’s no world short of injuries in which they are not named starters.
Antetokounmpo is the conference’s leading scorer, and is on track to shatter his own career-high in scoring and field goal percentage. Though his…
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