NBA All-Star snubs: Domantas Sabonis got robbed; LaMelo Ball, Trae Young clearly docked for losing

With the 2025 NBA All-Star starters already announced last week, the seven reserves for each conference were revealed on Thursday night. Reminder, this year’s All-Star game is not a traditional format. It’s four teams of eight (24 All-Stars split evenly and the winning team of the Rising Stars game) playing basically a bracketed tournament. As such, this is the 24-player pool (starters and reserves) from which those eight-players teams will be drawn. The starters were determined by a combination of votes from fans, media and players, while the reserves were selected by the coaches.

2025 NBA All-Star Pool

*= starter

Congratulation to all these players. They’re all fantastic, obviously. But naturally, this is where we talk about who got snubbed. There were three guys in each conference who didn’t make the team who had top-flight cases, but one stands out as the biggest omission. That’s where we’ll start. 

Western Conference

This is absolute highway robbery. Shame on the coaches for not rewarding Sabonis, who leads the league with 42 double-doubles while registering near the top of almost every advanced metric. He’s averaging 21 points per game on 61% shooting and leads the league at just under 15 rebounds per night. 

How rare is that particular combination of statistical marks? The only other player to achieve them in a single season is Wilt Chamberlain. That’s right, a player who is having a season only matched by Wilt freaking Chamberlain isn’t an All-Star. Okay. 

I get the need to reward a Rockets player with the Alperen Sengun selection, but that is a sum-of-its-parts operation in Houston, and if you really felt that strongly about a Houston representative, you could’ve easily justified Jalen Green over James Harden.

Leaving Sabonis out is ridiculous. Sengun is shooting 49% from the field; Sabonis is shooting 45% from 3! It obviously took a coaching change to get the Kings going, but over 13 games in January they are 10-3 and Sabonis is averaging 21.7 points, 16.8 rebounds, 7.8 assists on preposterous 64/60 shooting splits. That 60% 3-point clip isn’t on insignificant volume, either. He’s 20 for 33 from deep over this span. The coaches got this wrong. 

I’m not as worked up over Irving’s snub as I am Sabonis’, but I would have him in over Harden. Yes, Harden has played in a handful more games, but the guy is shooting under 40% from the field. As you’ll see below, he shouldn’t even be in over his own Clippers teammate. Irving, meanwhile, is flirting with another 50-40-90 season while averaging better than 24 points per night. Harden is a nod to winning, but come on, the Clippers have ONE MORE WIN than the Mavericks. Kyrie has been better than Harden by a pretty wide margin. 

Compared to Harden on a per-100 basis, the Clippers rise significantly higher with Powell on the floor and fall significantly lower with him off. All told, Powell swings the Clippers’ fortunes by over 10 points per 100 possessions while Harden swings them less than five, per Cleaning the Glass. 

Don’t want to hear about nerdy on-off splits? Fine. Powell is averaging 24 points per game to Harden’s 21, and more importantly, Powell is shooting almost 44% from 3 on just under eight attempts per game. The Clippers have been arguably the most surprising team because of defense, and Harden is not part of that. With Kawhi Leonard out, Powell has been without question the biggest offensive weapon. He should be in instead of Harden. 

Eastern Conference

Young was not selected by the coaches and it’s not surprising. Herro would’ve been the guy to be replaced by Young as well as the two players listed below, but Herro has been more efficient than all of them, and the Heat — although certainly not a good team — are better than Atlanta, Charlotte or Philadelphia. 

Ultimately, coaches value winning, and Young’s play just hasn’t translated. It hasn’t translated for a while, to be frank. A bunch of Hawks are having very good seasons and yet they’re three games under .500 entering play on Thursday. 

Yes, Young leads the league in assists, but his shooting is way down at barely 40% overall and just 34% from 3. At this point, Young has been pretty clearly labeled by coaches as at least a somewhat empty-stats guy. He’ll have to swing that perception by leading his team somewhere other than the Play-In. 

Speaking of empty stats, Ball — who was the leading guard vote getter among fans — gets aced out of a spot as the league’s fourth-leading scorer at over 28 points per game. You’re not going to see that often. Ball is clearly seen as more of a carnival act than a winning player by coaches. He has massive usage and free reign to do as he pleases without stakes for a terrible team, and his efficiency is nothing to write home about. But still, his stats are pretty insane to not be on an All-Star team. 

Maxey is the league’s seventh-leading scorer at over 27 points per game but his efficiency is down and the Sixers have been by far the most disappointing team in the league. That’s not Maxey’s fault, but he didn’t have a realistic chance of getting the nod over Herro, who has been much more efficient, when his team is sitting outside the Play-In. The Sixers are simply too stained right now to be rewarded with an All-Star, but Maxey is having an All-Star season.