As time passes (which it is prone to doing), I am becoming more and more convinced that John Collins was an egregious All-Star snub. Egregious being the key word. Previously, I thought he was just a normal All-Star snub, or maybe even barely an All-Star snub. Nope. The NBA/its fans/its players are all complicit in egregiously snubbing Collins from the All-Star game.
Now, as a Bucks fan, I have really enjoyed the play of Khris Middleton. But he was in no way deserving of an All-Star spot this year. Realistically, it was probably the NBA’s way of apologizing for snubbing him the year prior, but I am not a fan of make-up calls on the court, and I remain not a fan of make-up calls when it comes to accolades. Fans of other teams do not realize how on and off Middleton is. Lately, it’s been mostly off.
Meanwhile, Collins is a 20-10 machine. Sure, maybe a lot of his success comes from Trae Young’s borderline elite (or fully elite, screw it, how many passers are there in the league who are better than him?), and sure, maybe his team isn’t winning any games (not his fault that the Hawks FO decided to tank the season). But he is putting up insane numbers for a second-year player drafted in the middle of the first round.
And since the All-Star game is about offense, it should not count against him that he doesn’t block shots despite being an athletic freak, or even play much defense at all. So don’t even bring that argument up. I have already thoroughly refuted it.
This is just another feather in his cap which is now 95 percent feather and 5 percent cap. A career high in rebounds with 20, almost a career high in points with 33, I don’t even know how many times he dunked it. It was a lot. A few threes would’ve put this game over the top, but we can’t have everything in this life. Some things have to wait for the next life, and right now I’m praying that my next life is to be reborn as a guy who can actually dunk the basketball. It’s not frickin’ fair that some people get to be born able to dunk and some people aren’t.