Atlanta guard Trae Young doesn't view not getting picked for the All-Star Game as getting snubbed.
He has a new word.
“It's getting ‘Traed’ at this point,” he wrote on social media.
Young, the NBA's assist leader this season and a three-time All-Star selection, obviously wasn't pleased about not getting picked for the Feb. 16 All-Star event in San Francisco. The league's coaches pick the reserves for the game, their selections getting revealed on Thursday.
And a few notables didn't make the cut, including Young and Phoenix's Devin Booker — a two-time Olympic gold medalist and four-time All-Star.
It is not the first time Booker has been left out when many felt he had All-Star numbers. In recent days, Suns coach Mike Budenholzer also offered a strong pitch for Booker to get an All-Star nod this year.
“Obviously, something that I wanted to be a part of,” Booker said Friday in comments after Phoenix's shootaround practice before a game at Golden State. “But definitely not going to complain about taking a week to regroup with the family."
When arguments are made that someone who wasn't selected should have made an All-Star Game, the inevitable question then becomes asking who made the list and wasn't worthy of the spot.
"That’s always going to be the conversation every year — who got snubbed, who didn’t,” Booker said Friday. “There’s a lot of people who are deserving.”
Young hasn't been voted into the game since 2022; he was an injury replacement selected by Commissioner Adam Silver for the All-Star Game last year. Hawks coach Quin Snyder made clear that he believes the players who made the All-Star roster are deserving.
“That also doesn't preclude me from feeling the way I do about Trae,” Snyder said. “I haven't coached him for that long, but I feel like he's had the best year of his career. ... No disrespect to anyone that has made it, but as Trae's coach, I am allowed to feel disappointment for him not making it. And that's unfortunate.”
Fan voting accounts for 50% of the formula for deciding which players start the game, and Charlotte's LaMelo Ball was the backcourt player who got the most votes from fans in the Eastern Conference by a wide margin. But he narrowly missed being a starter after finishing third in the East backcourt voting by current players and seventh in the media balloting — then missed out on being a reserve because he didn't get listed on enough coaches' ballots.
Ball — averaging 28.2 points this season, fourth-best in the league — is the first player under the current voting format to win the fan vote at his position, but not get picked for the All-Star Game. Booker lauded Young and Ball for putting up what he called “unheard of numbers” and when asked if All-Star rosters should be expanded said that “the more talent in there, the better, I think.”
“There's so many talented players in the league now,” Booker said. “You could build a case probably for three or four guys on each side that have a legitimate case of being an All-Star.”
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba
Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press
