30Q: Will Kevin Martin Be an All-Star?

would make the All-star game. I know he’s the shooting guard and not the point guard, but
right now teams know that a high percentage of the time he’s holding on to the ball and looking for his own shot. If teams had to respect his passing ability it would bring his level of play to new heights. I hope this was an area of focus for Kevin over the summer. Because of his known great offense teams tend to swarm him on defense, how many easy baskets would the Kings get if he became a good passer?

leading up to the all-star break, K-Mart’s only chance would be to be averaging about 28 to 30 points a game, and be Top 3 NBA.

In other words:
(1) LeBron
(2) K-Mart
(3) Brandon Roy

If he stays healthy, and Westphal designs an offense around him, and his teammates get him the ball, he can average close to 30 points a game. Although, K-Mart has been known to go through stretches where physically tires. I think his motivation to bulk up a little this off-season are with that in mind.

If K-Mart is Top 3 scorer, even if our record is a stinky 12-28, maybe coaches give him the all-star nod.

If Martin is injury-free and shows the kind of flashes we saw pre-injury last year, especially if coupled with improvements in other parts of his game, he’s going to be very hard to ignore.

The lack of positionality causes a problem. It’s Guards, Forwards, and a Center. Not point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, center. Basically he’ll have to outplay Nash, Paul, D-Will, Parker, Kobe, Roy, Kidd, Manu, Billups. You also have to keep in mind that Iverson is back in the West too and for some strange reason the voters/coaches don’t like leaving him out of the All Star Game. So that’s 10 potential guards ahead of Kevin, with 6 likely being selected.

Let us assume that of those 10, only 2 are mortal locks for the All Star Game: Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul. Barring catastrophic injury those two are in for sure and anyone arguing otherwise should probably start watching a different sport. They could have nagging injuries that force them to sit and rest, but its doubtful since superstars of their caliber don’t turn down competition. Hell, Kobe’s still get a jacked up couple fingers on his shooting hand that he’s been playing with for something like a year and a half including the Olympics, a championship run, and last year’s All Star Game where he was co-MVP. These two are in.

The next tier are the guys that are near mortal locks. Deron Williams hasn’t been selected to an All Star Game yet, which is a travesty. I believe he was battling injury last year, so his exclusion makes sense. Brandon Roy also goes on this list. I see no real way he doesn’t make it. Billups rounds out the bottom of this list. There’s a very likely possibility that his team just implodes this year and he doesn’t make it.

That leaves us with the 5 guys I see as most likely to not make the All Star Game. All of these guys have a strong chance to make it, but these are the most likely to miss it. It’s possible that Kidd and Nash may not make it due to being the oldest of the bunch and being past their primes. Then again the All Star Game is infinitely more fun with guys like Kidd and Nash around, plus Kidd may be a coaches pick due to the game being in Dallas. The next most likely to miss would be Iverson. Let’s face it, they love putting him in the All Star Game. It’s an exhibition game, which quite frankly, the best possible way to watch Allen Iverson. However, the Grizzlies are gonna suck this year. They sucked last year, and Iverson doesn’t make them much better. I honestly think he misses out. Last, we have Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli. Both play for Greg Popovich who has no problem with his guys skipping the All Star Game and resting for the postseason. Timmy D doesn’t have a ton of gas left in the tank, so I think these guys don’t get selected or opt to skip it so they can go on one more championship run, plus Manu’s only been an All Star one time and I don’t see him making another All Star Game at the age of 32.

To sum it up, there’s 11 All Star guard candidates including Kevin. Let’s assume 6 are selected. Manu, Parker, and Iverson are out. That leaves 8. I think Nash misses but Kidd stays. That’s 7. That means one of the other guys either has to flat out not make it (Billups) or someone has an injury they deem worth skipping the All Star Game for. Then again that injured player could be Kevin. Basically, there’s an outside shot Kevin makes it this year, but I definitely think we can get our hopes up.

usually only make the all-star team if they are insanely good or they are on a big market team that sucks. Martin is going to need to be great and the Kings will need to be showing at least some signs of life if he is to be invited to all star weekend, unless foul drawing is added to the skills challenge.

these things happen:

1. Kings win more games or at least have competitive losses.
2. Two to three of those players on the “fairly sure” list get injured.

I’d hate for number 2 to happen but it’s the unfortunate truth. K-Speed truly deserves to be there but it probably won’t happen.

& plays 90% of the games we wont have a horrible record so he it won’t be a factor. As good as Kevin is that is an amazing accomplishment in todays NBA.

McGrady or Iverson. If they put together decent first halves then I suspect their name recognition will be enough.

simply because the Kings never get any love, and we’ll probably be at or near the bottom of records by all-star break. I do think ’Reke and JT will make the Rookie-Sophomore game though (JT should have made it last year but whatever).

What I’d like to see is for Kevin to stay healthy and have his best season yet. Get mentioned often in the “All-star snubs” columns and then enter next season with some “All-Star” buzz, and make it next year. I can see that happening.

won’t help his reputation of putting up good scoring numbers on a bad team. The team has to make a marked improvement, or Kevin needs to work on his defense to improve his rep as an all-around player.

that would be 3 kings in the game, I like it

But whether or not the Kings will be good enough to get Martin into the ASG.

Arguably, I might even put Boozer and Okur up there with Yao being out, big men are going to be in high demand. Nash was not in 2009 ASG but I wouldn’t bank on him being back in.

Some players might have worse stats but play on better teams, if Mo Williams makes it just because he’s “the second best player on the Cavs” you know there are people that are going to make it on the basis that their team is better than the Kings. I wouldn’t be surprised.

not just for Kevin Martin and his own health, but the health of the other backcourt guys. Throw in the other guys with outside chance credentials:

Monta Ellis, Westbrook, Baron Davis, OJ Mayo, Jason Terry, Eric Gordon – guys who could average 20+ ppg – and then throw in the guys with true All-Star cred who are hard to pass up, like Tony Parker, Jason Kidd, Allen Iverson and mix that up with the injury bug and it is a big crapshoot.

As bodies pass in to and out of the selection process spots open up. Given a tie, do you give the alternate spot to Kevin Martin who is averaging 24 ppg on the Kings with say 14-26 record or Tony Parker averaging 18 ppg on a 20-20 Spurs team or an Allen Iverson averaging 20.2 ppg on a 12-28 Griz team.

It will be close, but the Kings have not had an All-Star since 2004 and Peja Stojakovic as a reserve and 3 pt shoot out contestant.

Hey, and I am gone for 10 days and the Kngs sign Brockman and Desmond Mason? Are they going to put Mason on Hoss’s shoulders to make a back-up C ?

Those are probably our best shot for our guys to get some media attention and give us something to cheer for at ASW. KM should be a shoo-in at the 3pt.

Omri or Donte for dunk would be a blast (though I don’t know if they’re explosive creative dunkers — at least in eyes of people who put the dunk contest together).

For KM’s All-Star chances? First ballot, no. Reserves, no. Injury Replacement… iffy at best.

Agree with sentiments that he’ll pretty much have to put up Jordanesque numbers in PPG and take over our team to win. We’ll also need a .500 record (tall order) to get ESPN (and therefore all mainstream sportswriters) to fawn over KM and question the sanity of coaches not selecting KM to ASW as a reserve.