TORONTO — Lonzo Ball isn’t one to complain.
But after his brother LaMelo Ball — the starting point guard for the Charlotte Hornets and the second-highest scoring guard in the league — didn’t earn an All-Star selection, Lonzo couldn’t help but raise some questions.
Was LaMelo’s exclusion from the Eastern Conference roster a snub?
“Oh, absolutely,” Lonzo told the Tribune. “A couple of guys got snubbed, but he would be head of the list.”
All-Star selections are often controversial. The talent at the top of each conference is usually impossible to disperse, with at least a handful of players missing the team despite putting up comparable statistics to other selected competitors. For instance, Ball was quick to highlight Chicago Bulls teammate Zach LaVine as another player who he believed should have been an All-Star.
But LaMelo’s exclusion was historic: he is the first NBA player to lead their voting category and not earn an All-Star selection.
LaMelo ranked first in fan votes (2.4 million) and third in player votes (68) among Eastern Conference guards. But he finished seventh in media voting, earning only three votes. Due to the weighting of fan voting — those account for 50% of final results while player and media votes count for 25% apiece — LaMelo missed out.
To Lonzo, this disparity in media and fan support didn’t come as a surprise. He’s personally familiar with the differing coverage between small and large market teams. After all, he saw it throughout his own career while moving from Los Angeles to New Orleans to Chicago.
“If you watch all the sports shows, the bigger market teams are going to get the most pub,” Lonzo said. “It’s just how it goes. That’s how life is. So him being in Charlotte probably did hurt his chances a little bit.”
Fan voting has been part of All-Star selections since 1975, but the process has changed dramatically over that five-decade span. Paper ballots collected at arenas and movie theaters have been replaced by hashtags on social media, making it easier for fans of a specific player to overwhelm the voting process.
In recent years, this has led to some criticism that fan voting could be making an outsized impact on All-Star selections, which are tied to player bonuses and contract negotiations. But this year, Lonzo feels LaMelo’s absence proves the opposite point — that the fan vote doesn’t have much weight at all.
“I think they need to find a balance or just take the vote away,” Lonzo said. “Somebody that’s that high in the fan vote and then doesn’t make the team, I don’t understand that. It kind of makes it seem like the fans don’t really matter.”
For both Balls, the missed selection is just a reminder of the work left to be done, especially as the Hornets struggle through another season at the bottom of the East.
But Lonzo hopes his brother is encouraged by the way he has clearly connected with fans — not just in Charlotte, but throughout the league — with his style of play.
“No matter who he’s lined up against every night, you know that you’re gonna see a show,” Lonzo said. “You know watching him you’re gonna get your money’s worth. It’s that simple. He plays the game at a very fun pace. He plays his own brand of basketball and he’s been playing like that since he was a little kid. It’s no surprise that it translated.”
