Top 10 players who never made it to an NBA All-Star team
Not making an NBA All-star team is not always a case of a player's lack of pedigree or quality. Most of the time, it is often a case of bad timing. In this article, we will take a look at the Top 10 players who never made it to the NBA All-star team.
Top 10 players who never made it to an NBA All-star team
Circumstances can dictate a player's chances of making it to an NBA All-star roster in his conference.
Shooting guards in the Eastern Conference during the late 1980s and the 1990s who were not named Michael Jordan, Reggie Miller or Joe Dumars found it extremely difficult to find a place in the NBA All-star team.
Eminent power forwards during the early 2000s in the Western Conference - Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Webber and Rasheed Wallace - did not always make it to an NBA All-Star game. So one can see that an ASG selection is not always dependent on the quality of a player.
On that note, let's have a look at the top 10 players who were conspicuous by their absence in an All-Star roster.
#10 Sam Perkins
Though Sam Perkins ventured deep into the NBA Playoffs on numerous occasions and was part of great teams, he was never selected to an NBA All-star team, which was really unfortunate.
During his 17-year NBA career, Perkins excelled for the Dallas Mavericks and the LA Lakers but an All-Star selection remained elusive for the player.
From 1985-86, the then 24-year-old averaged 15 points and eight rebounds on 47% from the field for eight seasons. These were solid numbers, but apparently not NBA All-star worthy.
Perkins was usually the third or fifth-best option in his team. Of course, that was because he had the likes of Mark Aguirre, Rolando Blackman, Adrian Dantley, Derek Harper, Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Byron Scott as his teammates.
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#9 Marcus Camby
Marcus Camby's defensive abilities were highly renowned in the NBA as he was selected four times to the All-defensive NBA teams during his career and also won one NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. However, like the others in this list, he never made an NBA All-Star team.
Not making an NBA All-star game in 17 years did not mean that Camby's career was lackluster; it was perhaps a case of good but not good enough.
If his progression would have been a little better and he was able to build from the great rookie season he had (career-high 14.8 points), things could have been different for him. Camby never played in outstanding teams; he reached the NBA Finals in 1999, but his New York Knicks team were an eight-seed that got hot during the Playoffs.
Camby's best season was in 2006-07 with the Denver Nuggets for whom he averaged a double-double and won the Defensive Player of the Year recognition.