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Even in the NBA’s era of analytics, flash, fame and sexiness remain the decisive data points for many. Hence Kyrie Irving and DeMar DeRozan being selected as All-Star starters in the East.
Irving is a killer – maybe the most unstoppable one-on-one scorer in the league. DeRozan isn’t quite as deadly – the wounds he inflicts can be bandaged – but like Irving, he makes a living producing good out of what should be bad.
The stardom of Irving and DeRozan is obvious and classical. But the shine of what they can do on a single possession – Irving’s drives that resemble a cannonball on a water slide, followed by the sweet finish off glass, DeRozan’s Kobe tribute band surveys into the paint that finish with that off-balance, falling back righty floater over a crowd – can be bright to the point of blinding, obscuring their weaknesses. Like, say, playing defence, or consistently making their teammates better.
Kyle Lowry and Isaiah Thomas do not wow you on a single play – they are full-game artists. To appreciate either, you have to delight in the ebbs and flows of the game’s 48 minutes and see how they gradually but decisively lift their teammates and crush their opposition.
Lowry is the best guard in the East, and that’s not up for debate. Maybe you want Irving for a playoff series (and you can probably drop the ‘maybe’ from that), but over the course of last season and the first half of this one, Lowry has established himself as the conference’s premier guard.
Of all the star point guards, he’s the best defender outside of Los Angeles. And that’s not in praise of D’Angelo Russell.
He’s a calculated bull and a tenacious tactician – using his absurdly low centre of gravity and core strength to navigate screens and stay close to opponents. He understands angles and he understands a little well-timed violence.
On offence, the only thing that screams superstar is Lowry’s output. He’s not graceful, not with his drives, his dribbling or his finishing. His jumper doesn’t exactly have a hitch in it, but it’s too stiff and has too many right angles to be beautiful.
But beauty isn’t Lowry’s game. With his craft, he leverages every slight athletic gift to its maximum effect. He doesn’t have singeing pace, but he’s just quick enough to beat defenders to the goal and strong enough to finish upon arrival. He’s an excellent, cerebral passer, and now that he’s hitting his threes at a vicious, likely unsustainable rate (43.8% on 7.5 attempts per game), he’s entered full-fledged, top-ten player in the league superstardom.
Isaiah Thomas is Lowry-lite, as well as every other player in the league-lite. Lowry has eight centimetres and nine kilograms on Thomas, and that’s why Thomas will never be his equal. But don’t tell Thomas that – someone whose entire NBA existence has been one giant middle finger to genetics.
Thomas’ size means he’ll always be a liability on defence, and his endeavour will never be able to compensate enough to square the ledger. He gets screened too easily and his lack of length means that he can’t really contest shots with anything more than vigour or be effective as a help defender. In the playoffs, if the Celtics see the Cavs, LeBron James will relentlessly find Thomas on defence the way he did Stephen Curry in last year’s Finals, and the Celtics will lose.
They’ll lose because they’re lost without Thomas on the floor. He’s their only penetrator, their only real creator, and their only reliable refuge when a play breaks down. Outside of James Harden and Russell Westbrook, the two MVP frontrunners, there arguably isn’t a player with a greater offensive burden than Thomas.
The fact that his tiny shoulders have been able to not just bear that burden, but grow taller underneath their weight, is enough to put Thomas second in the Eastern guard pecking order behind Lowry. His offensive output has been stupid – he’s scored at least 18 points in every single game this season, and he leads the league in fourth-quarter scoring. He’s been an absolute killer in the clutch, regularly sticking the dagger in opponents, often with that mid-range pull-up going around Al Horford’s pick.
Like Lowry, there isn’t much flash in Thomas’s star. He’s not that ‘cool’, which is strange, seeing as his closest comparison is Allen Iverson, maybe the coolest NBA player of all time. But Iverson was a cultural phenomenon, someone who came into the league with fame and pedigree, the first pick in the draft. Thomas, of course, was the draft’s final pick.
Thomas doesn’t have Iverson’s braids or tattoos or violence in his play. Iverson was iconic because he felt bigger than everyone around him. Thomas is a very short man who slithers around taller men.
But boy, does he slither. He’s all savvy and intuition, the master of stutter drives and quick pull-ups. His jumper isn’t smooth like Damian Lillard’s – although he will take and make those Lillard-type super deep threes where he eyes the rim for a while before he starts dribbling then says ‘screw it’ – and he often takes a couple of steps and follows his jumper towards the rim, the least cool and most responsible thing a player can do.
By efficiency, when Thomas is on the floor, Boston effectively has Houston’s offence, and when he hits the bench they become the Mavericks. Lowry’s statistical impact is even greater.
Irving and DeRozan are not late-Kobe Bryant type All-Star starter selections. They’re both excellent players, just like John Wall and Kemba Walker, who have their own (weaker) cases.
But Lowry and Thomas are the two guards in the East who have looked down on excellence this season. They’ve been transcendent – in output, impact, and most of all, in re-shaping our idea of what a star looks like, teaching us how nuance often shines brighter than blinding light.