He was an All-Star? NBA edition
Damion Lee, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Luguentz Dort are three players who received multiple player votes in the 2021 All-Star voting in the Western Conference backcourt votes. D'Angelo Russell is not one of those players, as he received but a lone vote from fellow players. The collective fan vote put him as the No. 23 guard in the Western Conference. His weighted score had him below Lou Williams and Talen Horton-Tucker.
So it's pretty weird to think about the fact that Russell was an All-Star just two seasons ago. It's not that he's a bad player by any means; on the contrary, his stats tell the opposite story, with averages of 21.3 points, 6.0 assists and 3.3 rebounds per game in the two years since that All-Star honor. The hope is that, at just 25 years old, Russell can still improve his game, play for a team that isn't dwelling at the bottom of the standings, stay healthy, and work his way back up to All-Star status. If he successfully does that, he can probably avoid finding himself on a list like this one a couple of decades from now.
The same can't be said for the guys below. And again, the names you'll see below are not bad NBA players. No one who is elected to an All-Star team is bad. They just may not be the first names that you think of when you think about the All-Star teams of the past 25 years, which is the random cut-off date I've decided upon. The Tim Duncans, Kobe Bryants, LeBron Jameses, the Stephen Currys... these are not the players you'll find below. Instead, this will probably serve as a trip down memory lane for that one random year when a player seemed to play above his skill level. Or perhaps you'll learn something new — a "huh, I didn't know that!" type of moment, you know?
Without further ado, here are nine players who may not ring the All-Star bell when you're toiling through your memory banks trying to remember the rosters of the past quarter-century. And thank you to the "No Dunks" podcast for inspiring the idea!
