Timmy has no shot of starting. Photo. Courtesy adidas

Lots of people are bent out of shape about this year’s NBA All-Star ballot either because guys have been left off (Devin Harris, Chris Wilcox) or because arbitrary decisions on player positions have changed the landscape of voting (Tim Duncan listed as a center where he can’t possibly win a starting nod over Yao Ming).

The Star-Telegram’s Jan Hubbard breaks down how the balloting works and how it can be that Devin Harris isn’t on the ballot but Erick Dampier somehow is:

In reading Mark Cuban’s blog today, I was stunned to find out that the owner of the Mavericks does not know how the All-Star ballot is selected. Cuban has owned the Mavericks for nearly eight years and he is one of the smartest, most thorough individuals I have ever met. So it’s difficult to believe that he has not taken the time to find out the makeup of something that he finds important enough to criticize.

For Cuban, the Issue is Devin Harris’ absence from the All-Star ballot.

It was serendipitous that I happened to write about that today in the Star-Telegram, so perhaps that will help. But as a service, I will go even farther.

The All-Star panel meets before the season because it has to to give the in-arena ballot time to be made and distributed to the 30 teams. The people on the panel have all covered the NBA for many years, most of them more than 20. This year, it consisted of USA Today’s David Dupree, the Chicago Tribune’s Sam Smith, TNT’s Ernie Johnson, Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum, the Charlotte Observer’s Rick Bonnell (president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association), ESPN the Magazine’s Ric Bucher and Mike Monroe from the San Antonio Express-News.

I have been part of the panel before and I can assure you that everyone takes the job quite seriously. There is lively debate and people sometimes even leave the meeting angry with the other guys because of disagreements over the fourth best player on the Clippers. So for anyone to believe that there was some sort of conspiracy to leave someone off, well, that’s silly.

Terry Lyons worked for the NBA public relations department for 26 years before leaving last summer. He has a blog and today, made a good point in responding to Cuban’s criticism. If you are going to put Harris on the ballot, then it is true. You have to take someone off.

The obvious candidate is Erick Dampier, but here’s the problem. The All-Star ballot requires that 12 centers be named from each conference. There are 15 teams in each conference and to be honest, there are not 12 All-Star centers in the entire league.

So the problem is that you have to have two players from each team but no more than five from any. With the center requirement, it makes it tough. There is little doubt that if the committee had not been forced into putting 12 centers on the ballot in each conference, then Harris might have made it.

If the committee made one mistake this year, it was arbitrarily moving Tim Duncan from forward to center, where he has no chance to start because the basketball citizenry of China will vote Yao Ming as a starter. That can be taken care of, however, by separating players in the future between backcourt and frontcourt. Each ballot could list 20 backcourt players and 30 frontcourt players. Yes, there might be years when three 6-8 forwards win the top three spots, but it is better than listing 12 centers.

If I do have an issue with Cuban, it is when he writes in his blog that the All-Star committee is “supposedly its a bunch of media members ( which may be all the explanation I need) who decide who is on or off. No matter, its a sure bet none of them has a future as a GM in this league.”

Interesting that Cuban is deriding the media. When he was on “Dancing with the Stars,” I got several emails asking the media to attend a practice with him and partner Kym Johnson. Cuban wanted us all to write about it so that he could get more votes. I did, in fact, write an article about it and I was happy to do it because it was legitimate entertainment news made by the owner of a local sports team. In that case, I guess, the media was OK.

Personally, Devin Harris not being on the All-Star ballot is not as big of an issue as having to put 12 centers on the ballot in each conference. Harris will be on the ballot plenty of times, and besides, if anyone truly believes that Devin is one of the top two guards in the Western Conference, it is very easy to cast a write-in ballot. But again, to paraphrase Allen Iverson, we’re talking BALLOT. Not the All-Star game, but the BALLOT!

No doubt, I have no future as a GM, but then after writing about “Dancing with the Stars,” I have no future as an entertainment writer, either.

– Jan Hubbard

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