From SLAM Magazine:

For certain active players yet to play in an All-Star Game, there is always a chance they’ll be selected in upcoming seasons. This is a story, however, about players who were unjustly left out for the duration of their career, and will never have the opportunity to play because they have long since retired.

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We cannot rewrite history, but we can retroactively honor those players who deserved to be part of the spectacle that is the All-Star Game. Here’s my all-time list of the best retired plaDrazen Petrovicyers who never made an All-Star game appearance: Drazen Petrovic, Eddie Johnson, Derek Harper, Byron Scott, Rod Strickland, Ron Harper, Cedric Maxwell, Purvis Short, Phil Ford, Orlando Woolridge, Sam Perkins, Toni Kukoc.

In considering all the aforementioned players, I have to mention first my countryman, the late Drazen Petrovic, who left us too soon at the age of 28. Drazen was particularly deserving of playing in the 1993 All-Star game, hosted in Salt Lake City.

He was at the peak of his powers that season, averaging 23.4 ppg while also shooting 51.6 percent from the field and 49.6 percent from the three-point line (best in the League) at the time the All-Star reserves were announced. Petrovic was the only player not to be selected to the All-Star game amongst the NBA’s top 15 scorers in 1993. Why? Some strange circumstances conspired together. Firstly, though there are usually at least five guards on each team, in 1993, besides the two guards elected by the fans — Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas – the NBA coaches picked only two backups, namely Detroit’s Joe Dumars and Cleveland’s Mark Price. If the normal five guards had been picked, Petrovic likely would have made the team.

“I really thought I deserved to be on, the same way Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson had a good shot. I think a team like Cleveland, they have three guys on the team and New Jersey doesn’t have any, that is not correct,” said Petrovic to the New York Times. Later in the interview, when asked if New Jersey’s history of futility worked against the team’s candidates for the All-Star game, Petrovic said, “I think so. We’ve been losing for six years and people say, ‘Aww, who is that? The New Jersey Nets?’ Politics was a big key because Cleveland, we beat them twice this year. But that’s life.”

Read the full article at SLAM Magazine.