Joel Embiid’s All-Star Starter Snub Should Make NBA Overhaul Its Voting Process

Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid has finished as the runner-up for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award in each of the past two seasons, yet he’s somehow been even better in 2022-23.

One year after leading the league in scoring with 30.6 points per game, he’s setting new career highs in points (33.4), field-goal percentage (.532) and free-throw percentage (.861) for a Sixers team that currently sits second in the Eastern Conference. Heading into Thursday’s action, Embiid was second leaguewide in player efficiency rating, third in win shares per 48 minutes, third in box plus/minus and third in Dunks and Threes’ estimated plus/minus. He’s also currently tied for the third-best odds to win this year’s MVP award, per FanDuel Sportsbook.

Despite all of that, Embiid was not voted in as a starter for the 2023 NBA All-Star Game on Thursday. That snub is emblematic of the current issues with the NBA’s All-Star voting process.

Fans account for 50 percent of the votes for All-Star starters, while players (25 percent) and a media panel (25 percent) make up the remainder. Embiid finished third among Eastern Conference frontcourt players for in both the media and players’ votes, but he was fourth among fans.

None of those voting groups are to blame for Embiid’s snub, though. Instead, the ballot itself is the culprit.

Under the current system, players are separated by “backcourt” and “frontcourt” designations. Each conference has two backcourt starters and three frontcourt starters, while the seven reserves are comprised of two backcourt players, three frontcourt players and two wild cards (either backcourt or frontcourt players).

That system makes less sense every year as the league trends more and more toward positionless basketball. The NBA should drop positions from the ballot entirely and allow fans, players and media members to just vote for the five best players from each conference as the All-Star starters.

In the final returns from fan voting—which were released two days before voting closed—Embiid had more votes than any Eastern Conference guard. Unless Kyrie Irving and Donovan Mitchell overtook Embiid over those final few days, he likely would have been named a starter had the ballot not been separated by positions.

Embiid should be a no-brainer selection as an All-Star reserve, so his starting snub won’t matter in the long run. However, positional designations have led to some questionable All-Star snubs in past years, too.

In 2020, Miami Heat swingman Jimmy Butler missed out on a starting nod because he was listed as a frontcourt player rather than a backcourt player.

“I just think it’s ridiculous that we’re still in these antiquated positions,” Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra told reporters at the time. “So who’s to say what position Jimmy is? Does it matter? I put him No. 2 on my [lineup] card. So I go Kendrick Nunn, Jimmy Butler, Duncan Robinson, I go Bam [Adebayo] and then Meyers [Leonard]. But you could flip any one of those guys around. And in many ways he’s our point guard. So should he be in the All-Star Game as a point guard? I don’t know.”

Spoelstra added it was a “joke” that “antiquated labels” cost Butler a starting spot. He expressed hope that Butler’s snub would “change things in the future,” but three years later, Embiid finds himself in the same spot.

It’s only a matter of time before someone misses out on an All-Star nod outright because of his positional designation. If there are seven deserving guards in one conference and not enough viable frontcourt candidates, one guard will inevitably get left out. Considering that some players have incentives tied to All-Star appearances in their contracts, there’s too much money on the line for that to happen.

The NBA’s All-Star ballot isn’t the only one with this issue. All-NBA voting should likewise move to recognizing the best players regardless of position, as the current system has proved even more costly in recent years.

Unlike the All-Star ballot, players can be listed as multiple positions (a guard/forward or a forward/center) in All-NBA voting. However, if a player receives votes at multiple positions, they are “slotted at the position at which they received the most voting points.”

During the 2020-21 season, Jayson Tatum was listed as both a guard and a forward and received 69 total voting points. Kyrie Irving, who was listed as a guard, received 61 total voting points. But because Tatum received more votes as a forward than a guard, Irving made the All-NBA third team nand Tatum missed out.

Tatum had signed a five-year maximum contract extension that past fall that included the “Rose Rule” language. Had he made an All-NBA team, his extension would have started at 30 percent of the salary cap rather than 25 percent. Missing out wound up costing him $32 million over the course of his extension.

Tatum did make the All-NBA first team last season, but that didn’t stop him from pushing for changes to the voting system.

“I do think it should be positionless,” Tatum told reporters last May. “Joel Embiid was second in MVP voting and he made second team? It doesn’t really make too much sense.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged last June that the league is open to changing its All-NBA voting system.

“I think we are a league that has moved increasingly toward positionless basketball, and the current system may result in some inequities based on the happenstance of what your position is,” he told reporters.

As the league office continues to discuss a new collective bargaining agreement with the National Basketball Players Association, the two sides should revisit All-Star and All-NBA voting. The easiest solution is removing positional designations from both ballots, thus allowing the best players to be voted in regardless of position.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac or RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.