Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve had a great week and have a fantastic weekend ahead of you.
There’s always a lot of talk around the All-Star voting. Sometimes, the results are a bit more interesting than the actual game.
We always talk about who deserves to be included and who the snubs are and how the rosters should expand and a bunch of other things we don’t mention ever again after February.
But one of the most fascinating stories from this year’s voting that I don’t see very many people talking about is the straight-up disappearance of Tyrese Haliburton.
THE BIGGEST SNUBS: Here are the biggest All-Star snubs so far
The NBA released the latest vote count for the game and the only Tyrese listed for Eastern Conference guards is Maxey. Haliburton is just…not there.
Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokić continue to lead their respective conferences in the second fan returns of #NBAAllStar Voting presented by AT&T.
Fans account for 50% of the vote to decide All-Star starters. Players and a media panel account for 25% each.
Next fan update:… pic.twitter.com/oQvm99AmE5
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) January 9, 2025
Consider where we were last season when, not only did Haliburton have at least a million votes by this point, but he was an outright starter for the Eastern Conference with 3.4 million total votes. That was more than everyone not named Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid. Today, he’s straight up not included. It’s strange to see.
At least part of it can be explained by his down-season so far. He started the year extremely slow, shooting 37 percent from the field through the Pacers’ first 15 games. The Pacers started the season slow because of his slow start and expectations were high coming into this year. When that happens, you’re bound to see a dip in popularity.
This still has to be considered strange, though. Haliburton was an All-NBA player last season. He was an All-Star and an Olympian. He made a run to the Eastern Conference Finals with the Pacers. But here we are with names like Jordan Poole (260,825 votes) and Tyler Herro (223,479 votes) being included before Haliburton.
This isn’t to disparage those players in any way. They’re fine! Well, in Poole’s case, the Wizards are not fine. But at least he’s solid. I’m just pointing out how Tyrese Haliburton seems to be a bit forgotten these days.
If he is forgotten, though, he won’t be for long. The Pacers are climbing in the standings and have won four straight games. Haliburton is also playing much better these days. Since December 1, he’s averaging 19.8 points per game while shooting 47.8 percent from the floor and 38 percent from deep on nearly eight attempts per game. His assist-to-turnover ratio is a marvelous 9.2-to-1.7. That’s All-Star-worthy stuff.
At this point, he probably won’t make the game. But if the Pacers can make another surprisingly deep playoff run? I’m sure he won’t mind if we never talk about him again.
Cleveland vs. OKC is a thing
I told y’all the Cavaliers and the Thunder made the NBA’s regular season matter again.
People were into this game. According to data from ESPN, Wednesday’s showdown between the two best teams in the NBA averaged 1.87 million viewers and peaked at 2.5 million viewers. Those numbers are up 20 percent from last season in that same time slot.
That’s good. Really good. It’s something the NBA hasn’t seen a ton of over these last few seasons. Interest in the regular season has continuously waned year after year since the peak of the LeBron vs. the Warriors matchups. This bump is a trend in the right direction.
Is it a bit anomalous? Sure, I think that would be fair to say. It’s not every year that two teams who on pace to potentially win 70 games will play each other. But I don’t think it needed to be exactly that for people to be interested in this game.
We’ll see how things go next Thursday when they play again in Oklahoma City.
Shootaround
— Jimmy Butler trolling Pat Riley here is incredible. Here’s Bryan Kalborsky with more.
— Kendrick Perkins says the Suns want Jimmy Butler. Prince Grimes says that’s not a great thing for Phoenix.
— I’m so tired of hearing Tweaker, but Damian Lillard doesn’t seem to be.
— Here’s Bryan Kalbrosky with more on rising NBA Draft prospect Kasparas Jakucionis and his climb into the top 5 of this class.
That’s a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for reading Layup Lines today. We’ll chat more next week. Until then, peace. Enjoy the hoops this weekend.
-Sykes ✌️
