Three Stars of the Night: Two All-Stars and a guy who should have been

I wanted to do an all All-Star edition of three stars tonight, but I couldn’t leave Josh Smith off (representing he and Al Horford, who alone almost beat the Magic)… but he should have been one. So I’m calling this the All-Star edition anyway.

As always some guys are close but just missed out. Joe Johnson was last guy cut, with 26 points and nine assists. Derrick Williams had a career night with 24 points and 16 boards. Ricky Rubio had a nice line (18 points, 10 assists, nine rebounds) but if you shoot 3-for-13 you don’t make the cut. Nice to see the recently slumping Anthony Davis bounce back with 21 and 11. Monta Ellis had 27 points but needed 24 shots to get there. Jason Terry had a game-winning block and just the oddity of that almost got him in.

Third Star: Tony Parker (24 points, 6 rebounds, 7 assists)

While we’ve been talking about that LeBron guy and his nice little run Tony Parker has been tearing it up, too. In his last 10 games he is averaging 25.4 points a game on 60 percent shooting, plus 9.1 assists per game. He had another big game in this one — 8-of-14 shooting and that seventh assist was to Kawhi Leonard for the game winner with 1.5 seconds left. It was a final smart decision in another night of smart decisions by Parker.

Second Star: Josh Smith (30 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists)

Smith gets his name up here but it was really him combined with Al Horford (26 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists) that together overwhelmed the Magic. And I mean overwhelmed — at one point in the third quarter Smith/Horford alone had a five-point lead over the Magic. Smith was very efficient on the night shooting 13-of-20 from the field plus 2-of-3 from three. It has been a few games in a row where his outside shot has fallen and with that comes big numbers.

First Star: Paul George (23 points, 12 rebounds, 12 assists)

Yes, it was against the Bobcat’s “defense” but it was still a career first triple-double for Paul George and he’s not giving it back. He has literally had an All-Star first half of the season but had not played well against the Nets last game. So this time he came out aggressive from the start and the Cavaliers had no real answer. In the second half when the Pacers pulled away for the win George was doing the little things — 10 of his rebounds and 7 assists came after halftime. That’s what a team leader does: Whatever is needed to win.