Is it possible for a superstar to play on a medicore team?

I knew it was going to happen and I’m still dumbfounded by the results. I am, of course, talking about this year’s reserves for the NBA All-Star team. Once again, the top guy from my hometown team, the Golden State Warriors, was given the shaft and the title of snub for the second straight year. While I could rant for 1,500 words about how screwed up the NBA is for not making Monta Ellis an All-Star, my editors wouldn’t be too pleased. This year’s reserves do bring up an issue that I’ve dealt with as a fan, namely, what exactly it means to be among a league’s top players.

Listen to an ESPN analyst and you’ll quickly hear the motto of professional sports: winning matters above all else. It is for this reason alone that truly amazing quarterbacks, such as Dan Marino, will never be included in the ‘greatest ever’ discussion when there are plenty of quarterbacks with rings on their fingers. Athletes are judged by their ability to help their teams win games, which is exactly how it should be. Blake Griffin could average 20 and 10 for 10 straight years, but it won’t mean much if the Clippers never make the playoffs. However, in this hypothetical yet totally possible scenario, would Griffin be among the league’s best players? Based on recent All-Star selections, the answer would be no.

Unfortunately for some, there are few things more hated in the sports world than a player who puts up gaudy numbers on a bad team. While there are exceptions, these players are not respected in the league and among fans. These individuals are often viewed as ball hogs, head cases, or inexperienced players. More often than not these descriptions fit the bill, and those players don’t deserve to be among the league’s elite. However, not all stars for mediocre teams can be lumped into this category, nor should they.

Victories are a team effort. There hasn’t been a single team during my lifetime that has won a championship with one great player and a bunch of scrubs (LeBron James came close, but he’s a freak of nature). Successful teams build around one great player by acquiring a variety of role players and sidekicks. The superstar puts up the best statistics and will most likely single-handedly win a few regular season and postseason games, but the final number in the win column is a testament to the team as a whole. So if it is accepted that one player can’t win everything by himself, why are good players on bad teams penalized for their team’s success?

Expectedly, it all comes back to my Golden State Warriors and Monta Ellis (sorry Jim and Mrinal). Around the time that the reserves selections were being made, Ellis was putting up roughly 26 points per game on 46 percent shooting from the field, six assists per game, three rebounds per game, and 2.3 steals per game. He was the highest-scoring guard in the NBA and also played more than any other player in the league (he averages 41 minutes a game). His one real weakness was his team’s record, which stood at around five to six games below .500. The coaches of the league determined that being the best-scoring guard in the league is not enough to overcome a team that is young and plagued by injuries. The league made a mistake by putting too much emphasis on a team’s success when evaluating a player’s ability. Ellis was not the only player deemed not elite. Kevin Love, the league’s best rebounder and double-double machine, got snubbed and only made the roster because Yao Ming was injured.

Most people don’t share my point of view, so I’m sure I’ll hear plenty about how Monta and the Warriors are terrible and that only winners should be rewarded. But winners, or players on winning teams, are already rewarded with winning and first team honors. If the NBA example is getting old, you don’t need to look any further than the Ivy League to see that first team All-Ivy is reserved for the winners of the league. In 2009-10, three Cornell players were selected to the first team, along with current Warrior Jeremy Lin from Harvard, and the top scorer in the conference Zack Rosen from Penn. I don’t think each of the three Cornell players were better individually than every other player in the league, but they won games together and deserved those spots. Picking All-Stars, the supposedly top individuals in the league, should focus on what each player brings to the table. Obviously a player with great statistics is likely to help his team win and is therefore more likely to be on a winning team. However, this is not always the case. The reality of sports is that sometimes elite players don’t win.

Bart Lopez is a Columbia College senior majoring in economics-mathematics.
sports@columbiaspectator.com