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Mike Conley: Why Utah Jazz star deserves to be an NBA All-Star

In his thirteenth season in the league, Mike Conley is quietly orchestrating a Jazz team that currently top of the Western Conference standings. He has never been an All-Star, and this might be the last shot for one of the most respected players in the league.

Utah Jazz point guard Mike Conley surveying the floor (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Image: Utah Jazz point guard Mike Conley surveying the floor (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

NBA fans from around the world all do the same thing once All-Star voting opens. They make the case for the players they love over the players they don't. WhatsApp debates rage over whether Sabonis is a starter for the East. Tough choices have to be made. Paul George or Kawhi, Harden or Irving.

Mike Conley, quietly orchestrating a Utah Jazz team steamrolling the rest of the league, is not going to dominate those discussions. His greatness is subtle rather than flashy.

While his per game numbers aren't eye-popping (a nudge under 17 points, 6 assists and 4 rebounds), he's not a player you can fully appreciate via the box score, try as you might.

Instead, he's a guy who, if you watch him night in night out, will lead to a deeper, more nuanced understanding of basketball and all the ways a player can impact winning on the court. If you want to be entertained, you watch Trae Young. If you want to learn something, watch Mike Conley.

At this point he is everything a veteran NBA player should be: selfless, multi-faceted and a leader on and off the court. In other words, he's a pro's pro; a player's player; a point guard's point guard.

But is that enough to earn his very first All-Star selection now the Jazz possess the best record in the league?

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The Heatcheck team love Mike Conley and what he brings to the NBA, but is it enough to be part of the All-Star Weekend?

On this week's Heatcheck, Sky Sports' NBA analyst Mo Mooncey summarised the dilemma best.

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"Mike Conley isn't even averaging 17 points a game. Is that somebody that the average NBA fan wants to see in the All-Star game?" he said.

However, he also cited Conley's advanced metrics as proof of his value to both the Jazz and the league. Dig a bit deeper and the evidence is there. In fact, it's overwhelming.

Conley sits in the top 12 players in the league for both Win Shares and Offensive Win Shares, estimates of how many wins are contributed by a player. By the end of January he was far and away the NBA's leader in plus-minus, the actual points difference when he's on the floor.

At the time of writing he's also second in the entire league in FiveThirtyEight's RAPTOR ratings, their metric for ranking the best players in the NBA. On February 3, he was first.

B.J. Armstrong, a three-time champion with the Chicago Bulls, also believes the intangible winning impact of Conley just isn't what fans want to see when they take in the All-Star weekend, citing Ja Morant as the kind of explosive, highlight-reel player that should take the floor instead.

"When you're talking about an All-Star, you're talking about the two things that being an All-Star is all about. The top line is putting people in seats. The bottom line is winning games. He, throughout his career, has affected the bottom line. However, when you talk about the All-Star weekend it's about entertainment and entertainment value," he said.

"I gotta have Ja Morant, just one name, in All-Star weekend. I'm not coming there to see Win Shares, I'm not coming there to see screens, I'm not coming there to see PER, I'm coming to be entertained.

"I want to see Chris Paul do clever things, I want to see Steph Curry shoot threes without looking at the basket and I want to see Dame coming in from the logo. Let's put the entertainment value of what makes this league great first.

"I don't like him, I love Mike Conley. But these young players like Ja Morant, what he can do, he can make memorable weekends."

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Memphis Grizzlies' Kyle Anderson throws up a pass to Ja Morant for a two-handed dunk against 76ers

It's hard to disagree with the sanctity of All-Star weekend as a pure, unadulterated spectacle of NBA basketball. The problem is that Conley is a special case. Simply put, he's the best player never to make an All-Star game. He's a player that for the past decade has been - undisputedly - one of the best in his position in the league year on year.

That he hasn't appeared under the bright lights at All-Star weekend is an aberration. Jeff Teague, for example, has, earning an All-Star spot in 2015 as one of four Atlanta Hawks rewarded for having the best record in the Eastern Conference. Chris Paul was an All-Star last year averaging 18 points. Let's not pretend that it's a mortal sin for a player to be there for reasons other than scoring.

Conley has the Jazz top of the entire league while being their most impactful player. Absolutely nobody expected them to be 16-5 and above the Lakers and Clippers at this point in the season. When all is said done, Conley is a winner. He was as part of the 'Grit and Grind' Memphis Grizzlies and he is now. That deserves recognition, in a league that both demands and reveres it more than anything else.

Don't expect him to be voted in as a starter but if Conley isn't selected by the coaches as a reserve, it's a sign something has gone drastically wrong in what we value from our NBA stars.

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