A Confederacy of Dunces: How Philadelphia 76ers’ Jimmy Butler became All-Star snub

Were NBA coaches “A Confederacy of Dunces” to bypass Philadelphia 76ers forward Jimmy Butler for his fifth straight NBA All-Star slot?

The reserves for the NBA All-Star Game have been announced and another Philadelphia 76ers player will be joining Joel Embiid, who was voted in as a starter. Ben Simmons will be a first time All-Star.

While the starters are picked by a mixture of fans, media and players, it is the NBA coaches solely who select the rest of the all-star teams (There is no longer an East vs. West format, leading vote-getters LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo will select their own respective teams on Feb. 7).

However, for the first time in five years, Jimmy Butler was not voted to play in the All-Star Game.

For 20 hours after the selections, it was thought Butler might still slip into the All-Star Game.

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One of those voted in was Victor Oladipo, who is out for the year with a knee injury. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver names the replacement when needed, which speculation had down to a choice between Butler and D’Angelo Russell.

Silver picked Russell.

When he was on middling Chicago Bulls and Minnesota Timberwolves teams, Butler was named an All-Star yet, now that he’s helping the 76ers become one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference, he was overlooked.

Were the NBA coaches just ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ (the title of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by John Kennedy Toole) and really screwed up by not voting for Butler?

If you go by relevance, they certainly did. Butler’s Bulls and Timberwolves teams were never legitimate title contenders when he was being voted to All-Star teams. Butler is now on a squad that has a stated goal of making the NBA Finals, and they certainly look like they have a decent chance of achieving that goal based on their play of late.

On a statistical basis, one must compare Butler to the four previous years, when NBA coaches felt he was deserving of playing in the All-Star game.

A caveat to comparing stats is that his previous coach, Tom Thibodeau, was famous for playing his starters a lot. In his four previous seasons, Butler averaged about 37 minutes a game, while Brett Brown has played him at a 32 minutes average, so that must be considered.

Looking at 2018, the last time Butler was an All-Star, he scored more points on average (22.2 to 19.3) then he has this season, more rebounds by a slight margin (5.3 to 5.0), and assists (4.9 to 3.8) also favor last year when he was with Minnesota. However, all the differences are minor and can be mostly attributed to lesser minutes. If you go Per 36 minutes average there is only a small degree of difference.

Butler has done some things better this year than last year. His field goal shooting percentage is exactly the same (47.4 percent) and his three-point shooting percental is higher (37 to 35) than it was in 2017-18. This is a great sign considering, as we all know, the offense is not being tailored to Butler’s best attributes.

On the defensive end, Butler is averaging more steals and blocked shots then last season. He also has a lower turnover rate than last year. His plus/minus rating with the 76ers (+4.5) and Net Rating (6.7) is the highest of his career except for the 2017-18 season, which if you remember, Butler came back from an injury and led the T-Wolves to their first playoff appearance in 12 years.

Since Butler is playing for a team with more relevance than ever before and, statistically, there has been no major dropoff from what he has done in the past, was Butler done in simply by the coaches playing old-fashioned politics?

Butler, as has been well-documented, is not exactly an easy going guy. Although he professed his respect for Thibodeau, he provided a lot of headaches for him, particularly near the end when he was demanding to be traded.

NBA coaches are a small fraternity, and look after their own. Maybe some decided to leave Butler off the ballot to teach him a lesson on the way he treated Thibodeau?

Also, since Joel Embiid was already an All-Star and many coaches had put Ben Simmons on their ballot, they could have decided that the 76ers were fine with two representatives since, when the voting took place, they were just in fourth place in the Eastern Conference.

An interesting alternative theory comes from Utah Jazz coach Quin Snyder. His center, Rudy Gobert, was last year’s Defensive Player of the Year and a big reason the Jazz are in the upper echelon of the Western Conference. Gobert is not a big scorer but puts a major footprint on the game on the defensive end. Snyder thinks coaches might be just looking at scoring stats and not giving equal value to defense.

After all, if a player’s presence makes the other team score 20 points less, is that different in terms of impact than scoring 20 points yourself?

"“Rudy Gobert should absolutely be an All-Star,” Snyder told ESPN. “He’s one of the most impactful players in the league. This is clear, not subjective, and shows the the process of selecting All-Stars is flawed. We talk about defense being valued, but when we have an opportunity to reward it, we reward scoring again and again."

Butler is also known as a superb defensive player, having made second team All-NBA Defense four times in his career. It is the fact he contributes heavily on both ends of the floor that has made him be ranked, by some, as one of the top 10 players in the NBA.

So whatever the reason: no longer being a star on a mediocre team, statistics, politics, the coaches turning a blind eye to defensive standouts, when you look at all the factors, there does not seem to be a real reason Jimmy Butler did not make the All-Star Game this season compared to the past four.

So, in the final analysis, Butler did get robbed.