Deciding who might be considered an all-star snub is fraught with could haves and should haves, but it seems hard to believe Damian Lillard is not worthy of a place in the showcase.
The Portland Trail Blazers guard is probably the most egregious “snub” this season, passed over by Kobe Bryant due to to the vagaries of fan voting and, a bit more perplexingly, Russell Westbrook, who has been excellent but missed a decent chunk of time to injury.
Lillard has been a top-10 player by most advanced statistics but suffers from playing the same position in the same conference as Stephen Curry, James Harden and Chris Paul, as well as Westbrook and the popular-as-ever Bryant.
The latter will not play, as he convalesces from rotator cuff surgery, and has been replaced not by another guard but by the Sacramento Kings centre DeMarcus Cousins.
Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference, players like Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, who play for an under-performing Miami Heat team, have been selected, almost by default, to play in the February 15 game at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
The disparity in the NBA’s East and West fuels the capriciousness of all-star honours. A player like Wade, who remains elite offensively but whose overall value is hindered by waning defensive effectiveness, will be on display in a game meant to highlight the league’s top talents. It is a cruel fate for a player who has been the engine at the heart of the fourth-best team in the hyper-competitve West.
Lillard told NBA.com: “I’m definitely going to take it personal. I just felt disrespected. I play the game the right way … I think what an all-star represents in this league … I think I make up all those things.”
His argument is convincing. Lillard is a lethal offensive player, and a crucial one.
Portland’s scoring (107.2 points per 100 possessions when he is on the court) falls apart without him (to 96.4 points per 100).
He is a good, if not great, defender for the league’s fifth-best overall defence by points per 100, handed the impossible nightly task of guarding contemporaries like Curry and Paul and other Western Conference point guards like Mike Conley and Westbrook.
His usage rate (the percentage of a team’s possessions a player finishes when he is on the court) is a career high 26.6 per cent even as his assist percentage (the ratio of teammates’ made shots a player’s passes create) is a team-leading 28.5 per cent.
He has his flaws, including a too-low 42.8 shooting percentage, but he also does unappreciated things like draw fouls better than Paul or Curry while making a high percentage of those free throws.
But the fans, well, they love Kobe.
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
The candidates
Dr Ayham Ammora, scientist and business executive
Ali Azeem, business leader
Tony Booth, professor of education
Lord Browne, former BP chief executive
Dr Mohamed El-Erian, economist
Professor Wyn Evans, astrophysicist
Dr Mark Mann, scientist
Gina MIller, anti-Brexit campaigner
Lord Smith, former Cabinet minister
Sandi Toksvig, broadcaster
Miss Granny
Director: Joyce Bernal
Starring: Sarah Geronimo, James Reid, Xian Lim, Nova Villa
3/5
(Tagalog with Eng/Ar subtitles)
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Did you know?
Brunch has been around, is some form or another, for more than a century. The word was first mentioned in print in an 1895 edition of Hunter’s Weekly, after making the rounds among university students in Britain. The article, entitled Brunch: A Plea, argued the case for a later, more sociable weekend meal. “By eliminating the need to get up early on Sunday, brunch would make life brighter for Saturday night carousers. It would promote human happiness in other ways as well,” the piece read. “It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.” More than 100 years later, author Guy Beringer’s words still ring true, especially in the UAE, where brunches are often used to mark special, sociable occasions.
RESULTS
2pm: Maiden Dh 60,000 (Dirt) 1,400m. Winner: Masaali, Pat Dobbs (jockey), Doug Watson (trainer).
2.30pm: Handicap Dh 76,000 (D) 1,400m. Winner: Almoreb, Dane O’Neill, Ali Rashid Al Raihe.
3pm: Handicap Dh 64,000 (D) 1,200m. Winner: Imprison, Fabrice Veron, Rashed Bouresly.
3.30pm: Shadwell Farm Conditions Dh 100,000 (D) 1,000m. Winner: Raahy, Adrie de Vries, Jaber Ramadhan.
4pm: Maiden Dh 60,000 (D) 1,000m. Winner: Cross The Ocean, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar.
4.30pm: Handicap 64,000 (D) 1,950m. Winner: Sa’Ada, Fernando Jara, Ahmad bin Harmash.
Read more from Mina Al-Oraibi
GOLF’S RAHMBO
- 5 wins in 22 months as pro
- Three wins in past 10 starts
- 45 pro starts worldwide: 5 wins, 17 top 5s
- Ranked 551th in world on debut, now No 4 (was No 2 earlier this year)
- 5th player in last 30 years to win 3 European Tour and 2 PGA Tour titles before age 24 (Woods, Garcia, McIlroy, Spieth)
SNAPSHOT
While Huawei did launch the first smartphone with a 50MP image sensor in its P40 series in 2020, Oppo in 2014 introduced the Find 7, which was capable of taking 50MP images: this was done using a combination of a 13MP sensor and software that resulted in shots seemingly taken from a 50MP camera.
