Can Jaylen Brown and Derrick White both be All-Stars?

We are about a third of the way through the season, which means we have a large enough sample size to start looking ahead to All-Star selections.

Plenty of games remain left to play, and things can and undoubtedly will change dramatically. But right now, how many Celtics can earn a path toward All-Stardom? Let’s browse the competition and see how they stack up.

Note: this isn’t based on my personal choices, but rather on who I think fans, players, media, and coaches will select (coaches vote on the reserves) based on what we’ve seen so far, with a La Croix hint of forward-looking projection. I’m also not predicting starters or reserves here, but remember that All-Star rosters must have at least six frontcourt players — it’s not positionless like All-NBA teams. There is a lot of competition for the guard slots, as you’ll see.

Injuries, of course, are a major decider, so I’ll do the best I can with the information we have right now.

STONE-COLD LOCKS

Health permitting, a few players will be an All-Star without question, so let’s not waste too much time. Giannis Antetokounmpo will be a top-3 MVP candidate and is top of mind after dominating the OKC Thunder’s vaunted defense with a triple-double in the NBA Cup championship. He’s in.

Jayson Tatum will be on every ballot, too. He’s the most well-rounded superstar in the game, bar none. He’ll be there.

Donovan Mitchell’s surface-level stats may be down a tad thanks to fewer minutes (so many blowouts!), Darius Garland’s resurgence, and Evan Mobley’s emergence. But advanced stats love him, and he’s the best player on the team with the best record in the league (for now). He’s a lock.

While Jalen Brunson’s scoring has dipped from last year’s MVP-ballot campaign, he’s averaging a career-high in assists, still notching 25 points per night, and is shooting 43% from deep while driving the bus for an offense flip-flopping with Boston’s for best in the league. Particularly given the fan vote, Brunson’s inclusion is a certainty.

VERY LIKELY

With generous rounding, Damian Lillard is averaging 26/8/5 on excellent true shooting (62%). I’m unsure if winning the NBA Cup matters for All-Star purposes, but it certainly can’t hurt! Unless he has a drastic fall-off, he’ll make the cut.

You might not like it, but Trae Young is a cinch to make the All-Star Game. Although his shooting percentages are way down, he’s in full-on Point God mode and trying to be the first player since John Stockton 30 years ago to drop 12 dimes per game. Historical outliers get rewarded, and the fact that the Hawks have been winning of late helps.

Karl-Anthony Towns has been everything the Knicks hoped for and more (offensively, at least). He’s shooting a career-best 44% from deep and leading the entire league in rebounding. His infamously terrible rim protection (no thanks to coach Thibodeau’s baffling initial insistence on keeping him in a deep drop) has leveled off to merely poor. Towns was an All-Star in the much deeper Western Conference last year while having a worse season; he’ll get it again this year. Rightly or wrongly, coaches fear him. And they reward fear.

Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images

Evan Mobley is a top-5 defender in the NBA and showing off some new brutality in the paint. Rather than developing a three-pointer, Mobley just started shouldering dudes into the baseline photographers. Although Mobley’s superficial numbers (18 points, nine rebounds, 2.6 stocks per game) are lower than some other players, coaches will want to reward Cleveland with a second All-Star, and they respect Mobley’s defensive tenacity.

Jaylen Brown’s shooting percentages are stabilizing, he’s having the best passing season of his career by far, and he’s still a rugged on-ball defender. Pedigree matters, and with Brown having been an All-Star in three of the last four seasons, I think that’ll be more than enough. He can’t miss too many more games and has to keep improving his accuracy, but if he stays healthy, he’s a near-lock.

A GAUNTLET OF WORTHY CONTENDERS

Meanwhile, Derrick White is an analytics darling who ranks as closer to an All-NBA player than a non-All-Star on advanced metric leaderboards (14th in EPM, sixth in eRAPTOR, 16th in LEBRON, etc.). The Celtics cruised through the playoffs last year and have dominated this season seemingly without needing to put the pedal to the metal, and White’s been a huge part of that. He’s also a coach’s dream, someone who has worked hard to become one of the league’s most prolific and accurate shooters while being one of the NBA’s best off-ball defenders. My only hesitation: 17/5/5 is on the very low end for All-Star box-score stats, and even the coaches are prone to rewarding surface-level stuff. But I’m confident it will be enough, particularly given the relatively lackluster year most of the East’s teams are having to this point.

The real wildcard is LaMelo Ball. Love him or hate him, guys who score 30 points always make the All-Star team (Bradley Beal averaged 30 during a 2019-20 season in which he wasn’t an All-Star, but he only averaged ~29 points before the All-Star break, so technically, I’m still correct). Ball is fourth in the league in scoring, first in three-point attempts (by nearly two per game!), first in three-point attempts that make you spit out your drink, and 11th in assists. The NBA Cup break came at a great time for him, as he’s already missed six games; given his health history, it’s hard to trust him to play ~20 more without skipping many. But his numbers virtually guarantee him a spot if he can stay healthy, and he has been an All-Star before (albeit, ironically, as an injury replacement).

Detroit’s Cade Cunningham has made major strides and still has loads of room to improve. He’s averaging nearly 24/10/8 on 39% shooting from downtown and, with the help of new coach JB Bickerstaff, has turned the Pistons from annual laughingstocks into a respectable play-in team. He deserves it right now, but if Detroit falters, he might be in trouble despite his top-tier fantasy production.

Tyler Herro has been Miami’s best player to this point, and he’s the main reason the Heat have cobbled together a top-10 offense for just the second time since the LeBron era. He’s putting up 24 points thanks to 41% shooting from deep on more than 10 attempts per game, but he’s also averaging a career-high in assists (4.8) and free-throw attempts while attacking the boards. Miami’s offense falls off by 9.5 points per 100 possessions when he sits, and the team scores more points with Herro on and Jimmy Butler off than vice-versa. I’ve watched a lot of Heat games this year, and he’s been the straw that stirs Miami’s Coronita for most of the season.

However, after an injury-plagued and weirdly passive start, Jimmy Butler is coming on strong. He’s putting up his usual well-rounded box-score stats (highlighted by a recent 35-point, 19-rebound, 10-assist, four-steal triple-double against the Pistons) while nothing a true shooting percentage of 64.7% (league average is 57.3% this year, for comparison). His overall on/off and on numbers are even more impressive than Herro’s. If he can maintain this pace without missing too many more games, and the Heat remain a top-six seed, I think the coaches will end up going with Butler over Herro, and perhaps even Cunningham. Note: at least six All-Stars need to be frontcourt players, too, which might give Butler a boost over the guards, depending on how things shake out.

Do you know how many players are averaging 19/10/5/1/1 this season? One, and it’s not Wembanyama, or Tatum, or Davis, or Giannis. It’s Jalen Johnson, the Hawks’ Swiss Army Knife forward. He’s Atlanta’s best two-way force, and some would argue he’s Atlanta’s best player, period. If the Hawks stay hot, it’s very possible Johnson can leapfrog several of the names above him to make the team; if they swoon, I’m not sure the coaches will reward a middling Atlanta team with two All-Stars, especially if that means Miami gets zero.

Mobley has gotten all the love, but Darius Garland has had a really nice bounce-back year after a healthy offseason. He’s a few missed floaters from 50/40/90 percent shooting splits, averaging 20 points and nearly seven assists, and defending as well as he can. I don’t see the Cavs earning three All-Stars this year, because neither Mobley nor Garland has been that dominant, but if the Cavs still have the best record in the league when All-Star selection comes around, Garland will get consideration from the coaches. (It is hard to imagine half the East’s representatives being from Cleveland and Boston, but maybe that’s fair, given the conference’s weakness!)

YOU’RE SAYING THERE’S A CHANCE

There are other candidates with cases, too, but all are on the outside looking in right now.

I love Bam Adebayo. Coaches love Bam Adebayo. You love (or deeply hate and respect) Bam Adebayo. But he can’t hit water from a boat this year, and his weird role in the Heat’s offense (particularly to begin the year) will hurt him. It’s also difficult to parse out the credit for the Heat’s limited success between Herro, Butler, and Adebayo, and I get a feeling Adebayo would come in third right now, fairly or not.

The Chicago Bulls somehow have two players, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic, scoring 21+ points per game on excellent efficiency numbers (seriously, check out Vucevic’s shooting splits). I don’t think either cracks the All-Star roster, but a hot stretch and some untimely injuries to opponents could theoretically get one of them there.

Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton had a nightmare start to the year, but he’s seemingly found his footing. In his last 10 games, Haliburton has averaged 22 points and nearly nine assists while shooting 50% from the field and 41% from deep on two handfuls of triples per game. A lot of that is thanks to a cupcake schedule, but it’s worth noting, regardless.

Tyrese Maxey is putting up crooked scoring numbers, but his efficiency is horrific, and the 76ers’ lack of success with him at the helm will almost assuredly ruin his bid for a second-straight All-Star appearance.

He doesn’t have any chance at all, but RJ Barrett deserves acknowledgment. I don’t blame you if you haven’t watched many Raptors games this year, but sneakily, Barrett has turned into a legitimate point forward, averaging 24 points, seven rebounds, and six assists for a Raptors team decimated by injuries to its top players.

Injuries have curtailed the chances of several players who would have at least garnered consideration, including Franz Wagner, Paolo Banchero, Scottie Barnes, Joel Embiid, and more; barring miracles, I wouldn’t expect any to be All-Star candidates.

I know some of you are looking for a Payton Pritchard shout-out, but right now, there’s no viable path toward him even sneaking in as an injury replacement. He could absolutely put up Herro-like numbers on a different team and with a different role… but that’s not today’s reality.

There we have it! Let’s hope I’m right about Derrick White and Jaylen Brown; there’s still a lot of basketball left to be played.