As you may have heard, Wolves center Nikola Pekovic didn’t make the Western Conference All-Star team when the reserves were announced tonight, despite a brilliant marketing campaign by Wolves PR that spawned this clever album cover.
The reserves that did make it in the west include big men Dirk Nowitzki, Dwight Howard, and Lamarcus Aldridge.
The Wolves lone representative, forward Kevin Love, beat out Howard in the final voting period after trailing the Rockets center by 26,000 votes in the final preliminary vote count, so he was considered a shoe-in.
Aldridge, named along with Portland teammate Damian Lillard, is the inside force on one of the conference’s best teams, averaging 24 points and 12 rebounds per game, much better stats than Pek’s 18 and nine per contest.
Nowitzki, undoubtedly in the twilight of his career, still brings the nose every night, averaging 21 points and six rebounds a night, and would be the most arguable of the three big man choices.
Still, according to Pro Basketball Talk, Pek was buried even further on the list of frontcourt reserves than that, as they don’t list the Wolves center on their list of All-Star snubs.
Instead, Pelicans second-year big man Anthony Davis and Kings center Demarcus Cousins were the two frontcourt studs to make their west snub list.
Part of the reason Pek didn’t make the team or the list could be his recent injury, as he remains sidelined with ankle bursitis, though his numbers don’t necessarily add up to a spot in the ultra-talented frontcourt of the Western Conference either.
