My NBA All-Star reserves, featuring Jaren Jackson Jr. and Kyrie Irving (but no LaMelo)

New York Times

29-01-2025

Let's start with a very typical scene for the Memphis Grizzlies, and a very rare one for most other NBA big men.
It's late in the first quarter of Monday's game between Memphis and the New York Knicks, and Grizzlies 6-foot-10 forward Jaren Jackson Jr. is bringing the ball up across half court — something he's had the freedom to do often this year.
With acres of space on either side, he sees the Knicks' most vulnerable defender — Landry Shamet — matched up against him in transition and immediately goes to work. Though right-handed, Jackson attacks to his favored left side off the dribble and finishes his move with a short left-handed bank shot from the left side of the board for a bucket.
You don't see many former Defensive Players of the Year busting teams on off-hand shots from floater range, but that's been Jackson's mojo this season. All five of Jackson's 2-point baskets against New York on Monday were completed with a left-handed shot, including an 11-foot floater and a difficult falling, twisting fling in the lane.
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That's not unusual, either. Two days earlier against the Utah Jazz, Jackson made seven paint shots with his left hand. Over his past three games, he's made 16 paint shots with his left hand and two with his right; he's basically become the bizarro Mike Conley. What makes it so impressive is that these aren't attempts at the rim, for the most part; Jackson only has 24 dunks this season, and a mere 14 percent of his shot attempts have come in the restricted area.
Instead, scenes like Monday's have replayed themselves over and over, with Jackson shooting 53 percent on 2s between 3 and 10 feet — mostly via getting to an improvised left-handed shot that's halfway between a hook and a floater and draining it even against tough contests. While it didn't happen quite enough on Monday for Memphis' liking (the Grizzlies played their worst game of the season and absorbed a 143-106 thumping from the Knicks), Jackson's success as a stealth southpaw has been one of the year's most important developments, both for the Grizzlies' present and, as we'll discuss, their future.
(Full disclosure before we get too far into this: I was in the Memphis front office when the Grizzlies drafted Jackson in 2018.) Through Monday's games, Jackson is averaging a career-best 22.8 points per game and doing it far more efficiently than a year ago. He's also doing it on a more difficult shot diet, playing the vast majority of his minutes at power forward rather than getting rim runs from the center spot.
Part of that is easily explained by the return of Ja Morant and Desmond Bane, as Jackson was often left playing one-on-five during Memphis' miserable 27-win season in 2023-24. But a lot of it comes down to maximizing player and system thanks to the Grizzlies' offseason rethink of their offense. The Grizzlies' revamped system — emphasizing speed, dribble drives and off-ball cuts while minimizing pick-and-rolls — has given Jackson openings to attack the rim without needing to fight off the swarms of digging help defenders who flocked to him last season. He's benefiting with his best season as a pro.
'That's facts,' Jackson said of his increased operating room. 'It's a credit to where everybody is on the court. They're spacing it really well and making it easier for me to get space to score.'
'I think a lot of it was just the last couple years of development, trying to put him in more of a playmaker, decision-maker role in our offense,' Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins said. 'We talked a lot last year about seeing crowds, whether it was post-ups or drive situations. But now you see him bringing the ball up full court; he has better awareness of his teammates in front of him.'
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Jackson's play is likely about to be rewarded with a second NBA All-Star appearance when reserves are announced Thursday. He's both the leading scorer and best defender on a team that is 31-16 with the league's fourth-best net rating and has played in 45 consecutive games after missing the first two.
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He's one of my picks to make the team as well, and I'll get to the other 13 players in a minute. But first, let's talk about the other piece of long-term significance to Jackson's season, one that he is well aware could turn out to be quite lucrative for him if he can play in at least 20 more games and meet the 65-game threshold for league awards. (Jackson noted that he fell short of that threshold the year he won Defensive Player of the Year, playing only 63.)
Jackson's season has been good enough that he has a solid chance of being named to one of the league's three All-NBA teams, which would make him eligible for a supermax extension in July. It would be a tremendous windfall for both Jackson and his team in this case, because it would solve a bit of a collective bargaining agreement problem for the Grizzlies.
Because Jackson's previous extension in Memphis wasn't for the max and declined year to year, he's only due to make $23.4 million in the final season of the deal in 2025-26. That means the most Memphis could pay him in the first year of an extension is 140 percent of that amount, or $32.8 million … which is a mere pittance compared to his market value if he becomes an unrestricted free agent in 2026.
That outcome, obviously, would make the Grizzlies a tad nervous, even if they can outbid rivals and Jackson has shown no interest in fleeing. Other teams sizing up 2026 cap-room scenarios for a run at a potentially strong free-agent class likely had already circled Jackson as a potential target, if not the top one.
If Jackson makes one of the three All-NBA teams, however, all that goes out the window, because he'll never hit free agency. Instead, he'd be eligible to sign a mammoth supermax extension in July that could pay him up to a projected $345 million over five years.
(Two notes for the pedants: First, a five-year supermax can technically start at 30 percent of the cap rather than 35 percent, so Memphis has a bit of wiggle room to negotiate, but even the floor on this deal is a projected $296 million. Second, Jackson could also become supermax eligible by winning Defensive Player of the Year for a second time, but it seems a foregone conclusion that the San Antonio Spurs' Victor Wembanyama is getting that award.)
The good news, for both the Grizzlies and Jackson, is that he seems well on his way to nabbing one of the 15 All-NBA spots. Consider making the All-Star team a top-24 coronation at the very least, then do the math on guys who won't reach 65 games. Jackson has work left to do, obviously, but his season is tracking toward the best possible solution to a potentially thorny problem in Memphis.
Jackson, of course, is not the only player having an exceptional season who should be rewarded on Thursday. As a reminder, 10 players have already been named All-Star starters based on voting by fans, players and media. After that, 14 more — seven each in the West and East — must be selected. Of those, two must be guards and three must be frontcourt players, although the coaches are not beholden to where a player was listed on the All-Star ballot and have the leeway to move positions around if a player could fill either role (that's important for this exercise).
With those guidelines, here are the 13 other players (besides Jackson) who I believe should be honored Thursday:
Do we need to spend a lot of time on this one? Not too controversial, right? Wembanyama is one of what seems likely to be five first-time All-Stars this year, ranking seventh in PER, fourth in BPM and first in jaw-dropping what-on-earth-did-I-just-see highlight clips.
Again, I won't get bogged down too deep on this one. Davis has been awesome from day one and is pushing for first-team All-NBA honors, ranking fourth in PER while playing his usual stellar defense. Perhaps more importantly, he's played in 41 of Los Angeles' 44 games so far and is on track to beat the career-high of 76 he set a season ago. (Taps wood that Tuesday night's abdominal strain isn't serious.)
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Another first-time All-Star, if selected, in just his third pro season. The Thunder have the best record in the league and are pushing to sport the best defense of all time, and Williams' positional flexibility is a massive reason. He took over as a small-ball center when all the other Thunder bigs were injured and hardly missed a beat, offsetting his lack of size with almost supernatural rim-protection instincts despite being a collegiate point guard. For his day job, Williams operates as the lead ballhandler and shot-creator any time Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is off the floor. I've selected him as a guard here because the West frontcourt is loaded, but he's an easy call at either spot.
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Now things get much more difficult. First, the elephant in the room: Luka Dončić. He's a better player than anyone else we're about to discuss, but he's only played 22 games, didn't play them quite to his usual standard and is still out of the Dallas Mavericks lineup.
Historically, coaches have punished players who missed more than 10 games even if they were clearly more talented than the rest of the field, and while I think this bar has produced some fairly ridiculous votes, Dončić is in a different bailiwick having missed 25 games already. I don't think he warrants selection.
That leaves us with five high-scoring lead guards in the West backcourt: Edwards, Kyrie Irving, De'Aaron Fox, Devin Booker and James Harden. Edwards might have the weakest case at the offensive end, where he's honestly become fairly overrated. (His pull-up game is awesome when it's going, but he's struggled to match either the efficiency or passing skill of his rivals for this spot.)
Where he shines, however, are two other areas: durability and defense. Edwards has played every game and is one of the key defenders on the league's fifth-ranked defense. Given that the others all have missed time and none of them are exactly pushing for All-Defensive honors, that's a more relevant distinction than splitting hairs over true shooting percentages.
Sabonis leads the league in rebounding and offensively spends his time doing just what you imagine a glass-eating, board-snarfing big guy doing: He pushes his rebounds full court and drives and kicks for teammate 3s.
Watch any Kings game for long, and you'll see Sabonis turn one of his many boards into an immediate transition, take two hard dribbles into the paint and then turn behind him and fling a pass for a teammate to launch a 3. Here, for instance, he attacks Mikal Bridges on the move and sets up Malik Monk for an easy triple:
Sabonis' 6.5 assists per game aren't quite in Nikola Jokić territory, but it does lead the team; this ability at Sabonis' size would stand out a lot more if the guy in Denver wasn't throwing no-look dimes over his head every night. Sabonis also has mashed in the paint for his own buckets and stretched his range out to the 3-point line (48.4 percent on his rare attempts); overall, he's averaged 21.0 points and 60.9 percent shooting despite using his right arm only for falconry.
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Apologies here to Alperen Şengün — the best player in a hugely successful ensemble cast in Houston but not one of the best dozen in the West to my eyes — as well as Booker, Harden, Fox and Dončić. We'll try to get you guys moved to the East next year. (Or sooner, De'Aaron?)
So … Irving. On one hand, he's already missed 10 games. On the other hand: Only 10? Irving hasn't played more than 60 in a season in half a decade, so his tracking toward the high 60s is notable. So is the fact that he's defended much more consistently in Dallas than he did in his previous two stops, and he's chilled on all the other stuff.
Instead, what's come to the forefront is his talent. Even at 32, Irving is possibly the best trick-shot maker in the league, a master of artistic flips and finishes with either hand. That's allowed him to keep Dallas' offense afloat even in the absence of Dončić (and several others) and why he merits the last spot over a strong field.
The one Captain Obvious choice for the East frontcourt, Mobley has basically been the East's version of Jackson, except the Cavs have an even better record. With Mobley being both the defensive linchpin of an elite team and an efficient, high scorer for the league's best offense, it would be unprecedented for a player like this to be left off the All-Star team. That's doubly true in a conference that is mostly barren of other quality frontcourt candidates.
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Yes, Wagner.
The case against him is solely that he's missed 20 games. The case for him is that he used the 28 games he played to show he's massively better than everyone else in consideration here.
Additionally, Wagner is back playing and had little history of nicks and dings before going out of the lineup. Thus, a season total around 60 games seems highly plausible. That's high enough to be on the right side of history when we look back on this season, especially for a player who fills multiple roles at both ends on a likely playoff team while averaging 24.7 points and posting a 22.4 PER.
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OK, let's spend some time on this one. First, here is where I get to use some of that latitude with positions that I mentioned above. Cunningham has played guard all season, but he's 6-7 and frequently defends opposing forwards. With the rest of the East frontcourt crop being rather underwhelming, adding Cunningham as the next name here is the logical move.
As for the player himself, he inevitably might be getting a little too much credit for the Pistons' rebirth. Despite the vastly improved shooting around him, Cunningham's efficiency has remained stubbornly meh, partly because he is so dependent on tough pull-ups for his points. His unimpressive 54.6 true shooting percentage from a year ago has improved all the way to … 54.7. He's had games where he shot 7 of 26, 9 of 26 and 7 of 21, and that's just in the last two weeks.
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Meanwhile, turnovers remain a problem. Cunningham had back-to-back 10-turnover games earlier this month, and his rate of 6.3 miscues per 100 possessions is second only to Harden. The ball still wanders off sometimes in his left hand in particular, and even for a player with this much responsibility, his turnover rate stands out.
So, why Cunningham here? Two reasons. First, as noted above, have you seen the other frontcourt options? Not great. Normal standbys like Jaylen Brown and Scottie Barnes have had down years, and Jarrett Allen doesn't feel like a realistic option with such a low-usage role. It's Cunningham or Pascal Siakam, basically. Secondly, can we talk about Cunningham's defense? In particular, his shot-blocking? Yes, seriously.
Not renowned as a high-wire athlete, Cunningham has more than doubled his block rate from last season, spiking 1.1 per 100 possessions, and he's had some fantastic chase-down blocks.
Here's the whole package in one clip: a brutal turnover partly instigated by a wobbly left-hand dribble, followed by a chase-down block where he gets one of the league's best athletes (Houston's Tari Eason) at the rim and looks like he reads the paper while he's doing it.
I'd still like to see what Cunningham can do in a less demanding role that allows him to spot up off the ball more, and I still want to see him get to more easy shots at the rim either way. He'd be a no-hoper in the West, but this is the best we can do for a third East forward this year.
Remember when we thought the Cavs would have to break up their backcourt? Yeah, that was fun. The argument about Garland this year isn't whether to trade him; it's whether he should have been named an All-Star starter ahead of his more celebrated teammate Donovan Mitchell.
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Garland has been that good and that efficient in his turns running the offense, bouncing back from a forgettable 2023-24 season to co-pilot Cleveland's electric, league-leading offense. This one is an easy call.
Even with Lillard missing some games and the Bucks getting off to a rough start, he's an obvious choice for the other backcourt spot. His second season in Milwaukee has been much more what the Bucks hoped for when they acquired him in 2023, thanks to a much-improved pick-and-roll chemistry with Giannis Antetokounmpo and some rediscovered 3-point accuracy (38.3 percent). Topping it all, Lillard also scored 23 points in a game that didn't count in the stats, the Bucks' NBA Cup win that gave him his first career hardware.
We're not quite in barrel-scraping territory, but let's be real about the fact that nobody else left on this list would get a second look if they played in the West.
Nonetheless, of the remaining players, Haliburton is a cut above the rest. First of all, he's shown he can play at an exalted level before and had some obvious physical issues holding him back at the beginning of the season. Second, even with those issues, his stats for the first half are equal to or better than those of any of his competitors for this spot. Haliburton's advanced stats, in particular, still show him to be a difference-making offensive talent thanks to his combination of hit-ahead passing and long-range shooting, while his defensive vulnerabilities are at least somewhat offset by his rare knack for blocking 3-point attempts.
Finally, just look at the trend line. Haliburton went scoreless in the second game of the season and performed way below his usual standard for the first 15 contests, but since then, he's been a reasonable facsimile of his former self. One would bet on that player, not the guy from October, being the one we see for the rest of the season.
The four other strong contenders here are Brown, Siakam, Charlotte's LaMelo Ball and Miami's Tyler Herro. Ball is the easiest one to eliminate for me, because he's just missed too much time and doesn't have the type of iron-clad resume that Wagner does in the ones he played.
Coaches might reflexively vote Brown here just because they always do (especially if they consider Wagner's injury disqualifying at the forward spot), and he's certainly an All-Star-caliber talent. But his actual season has been way below the norm for an All-Star even in the East; I just can't quite get there.
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Siakam and Herro are thornier cases. Perhaps I'm too corrupted with 'I just don't really think of you as an All-Star' bias here, but to me, their arguments are entirely volume-dependent. They've been tremendous floor-raisers for their two teams by playing big minutes every game (OK, Herro missed one) and producing decent efficiency on high usage. That's great if you're doing a first-half MVP ballot, but selecting an All-Star team is a broader exercise. It's tough for me to stump for either as top-12 players in the conference.
Thus, Maxey. Coaches are bizarrely unwilling to consider players on teams a few games under .500, but he's basically been the same guy he was a season ago when he made the team. While the Sixers' season hasn't quite gone how they hoped, he's been consistent and productive and is still gaining steam. Maxey has 11 30-point outings since mid-December and had an average of 28.0 points on 57.6 percent true shooting in January even before Tuesday night's pantsing of the Los Angeles Lakers in which he scored 43 on 15-of-26 shooting.
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(Top photo of Kyrie Irving and Jaren Jackson Jr.: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)