it's not that he's not flashy, it's pretty much what yoiu said, he's a power forward, but he's playing up a position, he doesn't really have a dominant centre skillset, but then horford's team is doing a lot better than boguts (who have been as injury stricken, if not more than us, after a great late run last year)
I am honored to be a proud voter of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Luis Scola, Andrea Barganani, Kevin Martin, Carmelo Anthony, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo, Russel Westbrook, and finally, Yao Ming.
Yeah, the mavericks now have a defensive identity, a scrapper, Jason Kidd wasn't stopping anyone in last years playoffs, with Chandler they haeve to protect the rim when kids man gets by him time and time again.
Well, the West has been that way for the last half decade (post Shaq in LA), there hasn't been any decent centers, outside of Yao and maybe Kaman and Camby. Amar'e plays centers, but he is listed as forward.
wow the center position has really fallen off. REALLY fallen off. now an average player can be considered an all-star at the center position.
one year Antonio Davis was the Eastern starter. and Jamal Mcgloire also maded to the all star game. real all star centers are so hard to find nowadays.
Yao still in the lead. Yao Ming 754,583 Andrew Bynum 493,237 His lead actually got larger by 102 votes. http://www.nba.com/2011/news/01/06/allstar-ballot-results-3/index.html
all star vote has already become a popular contest. who cares who is in. i don pay tiny attention on all star anymore. if we had kept MJ on the paper every year after he retired, he would had been voted in every time for sure.
I've always thought that the China excuse was overstated. Look at the votes. Yao's winning his position due to nonexistent competition, but he's eclipsed by quite a few players there. Rajon Rondo has 140,000 more votes than him. And you'd think that if a significant portion of China's 1.3 billion people were voting, Yao would get more than about 600,000 votes... I think the real reason is just Yao's popularity, combined with the shallowness of the center position. Even with him injured these last 2 seasons, he's still the only western center with name value and a history of playing starter minutes at an All-Star level. People vote for who they know.
