The Portland Trail Blazers should be pushing for Jusuf Nurkic to be an All-Star

As the All-Star break gets closer, the Portland Trail Blazers are pushing fans to vote for CJ McCollum rather than a better performing Jusuf Nurkic.

Oh, NBA All-Star voting. When did get so… weird? In the most recent tally from fan voting per NBA.com, there are already a couple head-scratchers that could lead basketball purists to rip out their hair. One particularly egregious result comes from where DeMarcus Cousins ranks: he is tenth in Western Conference front court voting despite not playing a single minute this year. The fan vote, in essence, is becoming a popularity contest rather than an exercise in selecting the best candidates. And the Portland Trail Blazers may have succumb to playing the game of All-Star voting as opposed to pushing their two best players for these honors.

If you’ve watched the Blazers on NBA League Pass or paid attention to the team’s recent marketing, then you know Portland is promoting their backcourt duo as representatives for the All-Star game – Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum.

Over the last few seasons, these types of promotions have made sense. The club has so clearly been Dame and CJ’s team, much of group’s identity is based around them as scorers and they often jump out willing leaders both on and off the court, and each have put up the numbers to warrant the publicity for an All-Star selection.

But this year, it’s different. While Lillard has continued putting up All-Star worthy numbers and having a great effect on the team’s success, McCollum is having one of his worst seasons since becoming a full-time starter.

Not only is he shooting a career-low percentage from deep (.338), but a look at his advanced statistics shows that his effect on the floor has been wholly diminished. He is posting his worst box plus-minus since his rookie year (-0.8) and a worse value over replacement player or VORP stat than Meyers Leonard (0.4).

This is not at all to say that McCollum isn’t a highly talented player who will play a major factor in Portland’s overall success this year. But it is to say that he isn’t necessarily playing like an All-Star.

Instead, it feels the more responsible thing for the Blazers to do would be to push for a Jusuf Nurkic All-Star selection. The Bosnian Beasts is having the best season of his career and averaging a double-double with 15.0 points and 10.4 rebounds.

And if we look at him under the same advanced statistical lens as we did McCollum, it would seem the Trail Blazers should know best how much Nurkic deserves some publicity for his All-Star campaign. He leads the team in box plus-minus (+5.3) and ranks second in both win shares (4.6) and value over replacement player (2.2). For context, McCollum ranks eighth, fourth, and third in these respective categories.

I do not know how the Blazers marketing team works, but I’d be willing to bet they believe McCollum has a better chance at getting onto more Portland’s fans ballots than Nurkic does. So, even though Nurk is clearly having the better, more important season to the team, it makes more sense to push for McCollum because of his body of work and what he’s meant to the team in the past.

There’s nothing wrong with this, per se. Neither McCollum or Nurkic will make the All-Star team this year, regardless of advertising. Fans are the ones that watch the game, so the show around voting should be geared towards who the league believes fans will most want to see. And because fan voting is only worth 50% of the determination, the media and coaches can help fix some of the DeMarcus Cousins-isms that get revealed early on.

My biggest question though: why not just include all three in the campaign? After all, it’d be a nice nod to the Bosnian Beast if he was more apparent in the club’s push to get All-Star votes for their best players, rather than just their most popular two.

The 2019 NBA All-Star game will take place in Charlotte on February 17.