NBA to remove center designation from All-Star ballot

It’s about time.

For years the All-Star ballot has played this silly game — Tim Duncan would play the center role for the Spurs, as he has done pretty much since David Robinson retired, but he and the team would insist he be listed as a forward on the ballot. The play of big men has evolved over the years and while there are traditional centers — Dwight Howard, Andrew Bynum, Roy Hibbert — we will see Chris Bosh and Kevin Garnett at the five spot this year.

In response, the NBA is eliminating the center position from the All-Star ballot starting this year, something David Aldridge wrote on NBA.com Tuesday night, among other media reports. (If the NBA is putting it up on their own site, you can pretty much take this as fact.)

The league will announce Wednesday a change to its All-Star ballot that will, for the first time, allow fans to vote for three undefined “frontcourt” players instead of having to vote for two forwards and a center. With more and more teams playing smaller than in the past, the definition of “center” was becoming increasingly difficult — not to mention finding enough quality big men for whom to vote….

“It makes sense,” (NBA VP of Basketball Operations Stu) Jackson said. “It made sense to our Competition Committee. Having a center is the only specific position that was singled out on the ballot. It just seemed a little outdated and didn’t represent the way our game has evolved. By the same token, it also affords the same opportunity, if you have two good centers in a given year, pick ‘em both. They both can be selected. Which is impossible right now.”

This is the right move. So now when you get the ballot you will vote for two guards and three frontcourt players for each conference.

What will that mean for the voting? Good question. One would think Dwight Howard would still be a lock to be voted in out West, but in the East will Andrew Bynum still make it? He likely started if you had to vote for a center (he would beat out Roy Hibbert or Brook Lopez) but now people could just vote Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James and Chris Bosh (all forwards before) and leave Bynum out. It will be interesting to watch.

A collection of handpicked media members are meeting starting Wednesday to pick what players will be on the ballot. Because of the logistics of printing and distributing the ballots to NBA arenas by Nov. 13 (when voting opens) the names have to be chosen before the season even starts. That inevitably leads to a few people on the ballot who shouldn’t be and somebody being overlooked who starts out hot. And trust me, we will be pointing that out when it happens here at PBT. But we’ll acknowledge that task is impossible to do that far in advance.

On the bright side, at least now they don’t have to pick out centers. And we don’t have to vote for them.