The Rotation: Let the Players Choose

The Rotation is a weekly study on the NBA by one of our All-Star voices. In rotation this week is Matt Watson.

From the moment the All-Star reserves were announced last week, the spotlight seemed to shine brightest on those who felt they were snubbed rather than those who were actually selected. It happens every year, and it's getting old.

Some of the loudest complaints came from LeBron James, who wrongly (but understandably) assumed having one of the three best records in the game would guarantee Mo Williams being recognized. "It was very disrespectful [of] the coaches and whoever voted to put the reserves in there," James said after Cleveland's win in Detroit on Sunday. "Not taking anything away from any of the guys who were voted on, because they were worthy also, but for us to only have one All-Star and doing the things we're doing, it was a total smack in the face."

Williams initially called his omission "a tragedy," but to his credit, he was a bit more level-headed by the time I spoke with him. "The coaches had the opportunity to vote me in," he said. "If they felt like I was worthy of it, they would have voted me in. I'll just take it out on every Eastern conference coach – and Western conference teams by default."

While the Cavs felt slighted by having only one All-Star, the Celtics were annoyed at having two. Kevin Garnett was voted a starter by the fans, and only Paul Pierce was selected by the coaches to join him. Like Mo Williams, Ray Allen will stay behind (at least until an injury replacement is named for Jameer Nelson). To his credit, Allen took the news in stride, but Garnett was still visibly upset when I talked to him on Friday.

"I don't think that was fair," Garnett said. "This league is different, dog. ... I don't know what the hell it is right now. I know back in the day, a lot of it had to do with your own record versus what you were doing [statistically]."

Why are players so quick to play the disrespect card? Perhaps because the wrong people are picking the reserves.

Let's face it, the NBA is a player's league, and with only a small handful of exceptions head coaches are largely disposable. We've already seen seven coaches get axed since the beginning of the year -- that's nearly a quarter of the league -- and several more are rumored to be on the hot seat.

If you're an All-Star caliber player, it's virtually etched in stone that you have more job security than the guy on the sideline calling plays. And if players barely have reason to respect their own coach (who, incidentally, isn't allowed to vote for his own players), why should they think that the rest of the league's coaches will make the right call?

It's time to overhaul the system and give the players a voice. Just like in a court of law, players should be judged by a jury of their peers. A coach might have a pretty good idea of how deserving a player may be, but only someone who's actually in the middle of the action can instinctively say which players truly dominate and which players can be corralled into making bad decisions, or who brings the effort every trip down the court and who pads their stats late in the game when the outcome has long been decided. So why shouldn't their opinion count?

I asked Cleveland's Ben Wallace what he thought about allowing the players to choose the reserves, and he wasn't sure if it would make a difference. "Players can be biased, too, so it doesn't matter," Wallace said. "You put it on the coaches and let them make decisions. Bottom line, I guess you can't put everybody in the game, but every year we're going to have somebody left out for one reason or another, somebody looked over for one reason or another."

But that's the thing: If All-Stars are selected by players, there's no room to complain about being snubbed. If you didn't get picked, it's because your fellow players didn't respect you enough -- and whining about that lack of respect will only make things worse.

Think of it this way: It's rare that a referee can blow a whistle in an NBA game without at least one player complaining, but if you put those same players on a playground in the summertime, they'll call their own fouls without worrying about the ticky-tack stuff. You can fool or intimidate a referee into making bad calls, but you'll be laughed off the court if you try doing that among players policing themselves.

I asked Ray Allen what he thought, and he agrees the system should be changed. "It should be mixed," he said. His idea? Have the starters selected by a combination of the fans, coaches and media.

"You're talking about picking the best five of the first 40 games," Allen said. "And it changes every year -- not just the most popular, but the players that deserve it, that are playing the best. And then you let the players pick the reserves, who they think deserves to be on there."

I understand the argument for allowing the starters to be completely determined by fan voting (in fact, I've gone back and forth on it), but given the league's increasing popularity worldwide (see: China), we're nearing the point that a player (see: Yi Jianlian) might be chosen solely because of his nationality instead of merit (see: Yi's third-place finish among Eastern forwards).

I know the league wants to expand its international appeal, but featuring players who clearly don't belong only makes the game more irrelevant, not more compelling. Allowing the coaches and media to have a say will prevent it from becoming purely a popularity contest.

Allen agrees: "The NBA wants the fans to be involved, we as players want the fans to be involved -- it's the one sport that the fans are involved as much as they are being as close as they are to our game -- but you still want to hold the integrity of what it means to be an All-Star, and that's what's important."

And it is important. As much as people attempt to justify keeping a broken system by calling it a "meaningless exhibition," the fact of the matter is that players are constantly judged by the number of All-Star appearances they've made.

There are real consequences to a player being snubbed, whether it's leaving money on the table the next time a contract is negotiated or being forced to buy a ticket instead of being enshrined in the Hall of Fame years down the road. And if a player's legacy is what's at stake, then only those who are most qualified should decide where a player stands among his peers.