The Worst NBA All Stars of the Past Two Decades

Was going to lunch with my boys the other day when COUTRAM asked, "Who's the worst NBA All Star?"

The Roommate chimed in with Jamal Magloire. Someone else suggested Chris Gatling. Of course, I had to look into this further.

Looking back through 1986, when His Airness decided that basketball needed some revision, five NBA All Stars stand out as particularly egregious selections. Granted, I'm looking at full-season numbers, and the people choosing teams were looking at the half-seasons, but some of these are just too ridiculous to let slide.

See, in the NBA, it's extremely difficult to make mistakes with MVPs and All Stars. Every single league MVP is or will be a Hall of Famer (Argue about Diggler, but I won't). For the All Star game, picking 24 deserving guys isn't all that difficult, either, but on occasion, it appears the decision-makers went a little... shall we say... off off off Broadway.

Jamal Magloire
13.6/10.3/1.0, 2004 All Star

Dude wasn't terrible, but he put up a line Emeka Okafor's beat every season of his career. I mean, this is the guy who put Wojo in the Indian Death Lock. We can't hate him too much. Anyway, his selection is bad, but there's worse, I promise.



Dale Davis
10.0/9.9/0.9, 2000 All Star

Really? Really? Antoine Walker and Elton Brand weren't available?

Chris Gatling
19.0/7.9/.0.6, 1997 All Star

The pride of Old Dominion, and inspiration to folks with metal plates in their heads everywhere, gets brought up in these discussions because his long, thoroughly uninspiring, career has one bizarre season in the middle that sticks out like Derek Jeter in an abbey.

However, you can't deny that he actually produced that year like a guy who would be picked for the All Star Game, crappy team caveats aside.

B.J. Armstrong
14.8/2.1/3.9(!!!), 1994 All Star

Look at that again. B.J. Armstrong, a guard, in a scoring era roughly the same as the current day, put up 15 points and 4 assists per game and was an All Star. And the Bobcats want to push Raymond Felton out the door!

Now, for the worst All Star selection in the NBA's past two decades.

James Donaldson
7.0/9.3/0.8, 1988 All Star

This is a wreck. If someone of Donaldson's caliber were selected to an All Star team today, the internets would savage the coach who chose him and it would be a blot upon the land forevermore. To put this in perspective, Donaldson was eighth in scoring on his own team! But be patient. It gets amazing. Not only was he merely Shawn Bradley with fewer blocked shots on the surface statistical level, take into account that he played in a scoring environment nearly ten points per game better than today's. That's right, in a league that scored about ten percent more points per game per team, James Donaldson scored 7.0 per game. And made the All Star team.