Blame the system.
It's easy to think that the Western Conference coaches are fools for taking three guards on the All-Star team when the conference is dominated by forwards. It gets even easier when one realizes the league's leading scorer was among the omissions.
But the result of any vote is only as good as the system it uses, and in this case the All-Star voting process has a fairly obscure flaw that can lead to results like the ones we saw Thursday. The way it's set up, it's possible for multiple players at a position with weak compe ion to make the squad ahead of better players at a very strong position, even if that's a result that none of the coaches intended.
Let me construct a model of the vote and walk you through it so you can see what I mean. The system requires the coaches to choose two guards, two forwards, a center and two "wild cards" from any position. The league then tallies up everybody's votes and announces the winners.
We'll begin with the Western Conference guards. One of the choices was obvious: Steve Nash. Presumably he was on every ballot except Mike D'Antoni's (coaches can't vote for their own players). But at the other guard spot, suppose that the coaches were evenly split between Tony Parker and Allen Iverson as the second guard, and that no other candidate drew a vote. Additionally, suppose that D'Antoni would vote for both since he can't select Nash. In this example, it's possible that each would end up with eight votes from the 15 coaches.
Now move on to the forwards. Again, there were two fairly obvious choices: Dirk Nowitzki and Carlos Boozer. Dirk was probably unanimous except for his own coach, and Boozer may have been, as well (the votes were cast before the extent of Boozer's knee injury was known).
At center, Amare Stoudemire was also probably a near-unanimous choice (though it doesn't affect the discussion any if Marcus Camby got a few votes.)
Here's where it gets tricky. The coaches can also select two wild cards at any position to fill out their roster. Presumably they all went for forwards, given the strength of the position in the West. But if they all went for different forwards, there's a real problem. Suppose that among the four primary candidates at forward -- Shawn Marion, Josh Howard and Elton Brand -- Marion pulled down 11 votes while the other three got seven apiece.
In that case, when the league tallied up the votes, the final result would be:
Nowitzki -- 14
Nash -- 14
Boozer -- 14
Stoudemire -- 14
Marion -- 11
Parker -- 8
Iverson -- 8
Anthony -- 7
Brand -- 7
Howard -- 7
So Parker and Iverson would make it ahead of the three forwards, even though no coach (except D'Antoni, who had to) put both players on their ballot. Which is a striking outcome, because it produces three guards on the team even if every coach wanted only two.
And the more muddled the forward picture gets, the more likely this scenario is to happen. For instance, if Zach Randolph had pinched a few votes from the other three at the bottom, the margin between the two guards and the forward would be even greater. In fact, in extreme cases it's possible to end up with four guards and two forwards on the team even if the coaches wanted four forwards and two guards.
We can't know whether this is what happened because the league doesn't announce the voting results, but it's the most logical explanation. And if it is the cause, this probably isn't the first time. For instance, the Eastern Conference had a few weird years at the start of the decade when two centers made it as reserves even though the league was dominated by guards -- this model shows why.
Is there an easy way to fix it? Sure.
Have the coaches vote for the five subs at each position first. Then have them vote for the two "wild cards" at any position from the players that are left. It would take a little longer and wouldn't produce a tidy little announcement of all seven players at once. But if that system were in place, the Western Conference would have four forwards and two guards on the squad like everybody intended, rather than an All-Star team nobody would have selected on his own.
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