Washington Wizards: 3 Reasons Bradley Beal was snubbed from the 2020 All-Star Game

So Bradley Beal didn’t make the 2020 All-Star Game and the Washington Wizards streak of six consecutive years with an All-Star is done. What happened?

A week after the 2020 All-Star Game starters were announced, we finally learned who the NBA coaches selected as the All-Star Game reserves.

For the Western Conference,  Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell, Nikola Jokic, Rudy Gobert, Brandon Ingram, Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul join the starters in Chicago.

For the Eastern Conference, it’s Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry, Ben Simmons, Khris Middleton, Jayson Tatum, Bam Adebayo, Domas Sabonis.

One name is noticeably missing from that list of All-Star reserves.

Like it or not, it looks like Bradley Beal will not be an All-Star this season. Of course, the actual game is still a couple of weeks away, so anything could happen. But I’m not going to wish injury on anybody so let’s just assume he’s on the outside looking in when it comes to Chicago’s All-Star festivities.

But why?

Bradley Beal is the second-highest scoring guard in the Eastern Conference. If it were strictly up to the players, Beal would be STARTING for the East in the All-Star Game after receiving the second-most votes among Eastern Conference backcourt players.  Only James Harden has put up more 40-point games this season.Until they aren’t.

28.7 points, 6.4 assists, and 4.5 rebounds are All-Star numbers. So how can a guy be voted a starter by the players, but totally omitted from the final roster?

Every season, someone gets snubbed from the All-Star team. If they expanded the roster size from 12 players to 20 players, there would still be a four-way coin flip situation for the final spot. So what led to Beal’s snubbery this season? Let’s take a look…

The Washington Wizards Aren’t Winning

The All-Star Game isn’t the playoffs. And by that, I mean your team doesn’t have to have a winning record for you to qualify as an All-Star. At least in theory. But in reality, it always helps your case if your team is in contention, all other things being equal.

The Wizards, however, aren’t winning. They’re losing. They’re losing a lot. And they’re losing badly. As Beal’s scoring averages suggest, the Wizards aren’t losing because they can’t score. After 47 games, they actually have the 9th best Offensive Rating in the NBA, per Baksetball-Reference. They just have the WORST Defensive Rating.

This season, the Wizards are giving up some absurd point totals to their opponents. Four of the season’s top-six non-overtime point totals have been reached against the Wizards.

And although Beal is putting in WORK on the offensive end, his defensive numbers aren’t great. The only regular playing Wizard with a worse defensive rating than Beal is Isaiah Thomas and, well, he’s Isaiah Thomas.

According to NBA.com, Beal ranks 490th among 494 qualified players in Defensive Win Shares.

Defensive stats like that don’t exactly paint an All-Star picture for Beal, and the 16-31 record certainly doesn’t help either, especially in a year when the coaches seem to be rewarding winning.

Eleven of the twelve Eastern Conference All-Stars come from the top six teams in the East.

Trae Young, the Eastern Conference fan vote winner, is the only Eastern Conference All-Star on a team with a losing record.

But in Beal’s defense, this Washington Wizards roster wasn’t built to win. At least not this year. And the constant injury carousel hasn’t helped. Should Beal be forced to pay for that?

Bradley Beal’s Been Missing

It might not seem like a lot, been when it comes to picking the best of the best, sometimes, it’s the little things that make all the difference.

After struggling slightly with nagging injuries early in his career, Bradley Beal played in all 82 regular-season games for each of the last two seasons. That streak eventually ended in December when Beal missed a few games with leg soreness, then a few more with shoulder issues.

All in all, Beal missed only seven of the Wizards’ first 46 games before the All-Star reserves were announced. But that may have been a few too many. Especially considering what the Wizards were able to do with Beal on the sidelines.

The Wizards went 4-3 in the seven games that their starting shooting guard missed. And three of those four wins came against teams currently bound for the playoffs: the Miami Heat, Denver Nuggets, and Boston Celtics.

Are the Wizards a better team without Bradley Beal? Probably not. But did they get their best wins of the season while he was on the bench? Yes. And their record doesn’t seem to get better the better Beal plays.

We haven’t reached the All-Star break yet and this is already Beal’s most impressive scoring season. But the buckets aren’t translating to wins. Beal has scored 40 or more points six times this season. The Wizards are 1-5 in those games. They’re 8-11 when he scores at least 30 points, and just 11-22 when he scores at least 20.

With a record like that, it is hard to tell just how impactful Beal’s insane scoring streak really is.

Frontcourt Favoritism

Let’s just call it like it is. There was some real frontcourt favoritism in the All-Star reserve selections.

Of the seven available reserve spot, the maximum number of frontcourt players that could have been chosen was five. And five were chosen: Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler, Khris Middleton, Dontas Sabonis, and Jayson Tatum.

Kyle Lowry and Ben Simmons were the only backcourt reserves chosen by the coaches. And although it’d be great to see Bradley Beal playing in Chicago over all of those guys, it’s tough to argue that Beal should definitely be in over any of them. Take a look for yourself…

Frontcourt Reserves

• Bam Adebayo: 16.0 points, 10.4 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 62.5 TS%
• Jimmy Butler: 20.2 points, 6.9 rebounds, 6.4 assists, 58.1 TS%
• Khris Middleton: 20.2 points, 5.9 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 62.4 TS%
• Domantas Sabonis: 18.0 points, 12.8 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 58.1 TS%
• Jayson Tatum: 21.5 points, 6.9 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 54.2 TS%

Backcourt Reserves

• Kyle Lowry: 19.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, 7.3 assists, 58.3 TS%
• Ben Simmons: 16.6 points, 7.7 rebounds, 8.3 assists, 60.4 TS%

Those other averages are good, so are Beal’s…

Bradley Beal

• Bradley Beal: 28.7 points, 4.5 rebounds, 6.4 assists, 57.6 TS%

The All-Star Game is supposed to feature the league’s best players. For better or for worse, it looks like this year it’ll include the best teams’ best players.

Beal seemed to take the news pretty personally. The same night he was snubbed, he went out and dropped 34 points in a win over the Charlotte Hornets, adding nine rebounds, and nine assists, and skipping out on any post-game comments. Beal was balling before, but if this snubbing inspires him to take it up a notch, the rest of the league better run for cover.