When A League MVP Can't Even Make The All-Star Team.....

Hey Chauncey: It's cool -- you'll be an All-Star

When was the last time you saw a team sport’s potential league MVP buried in All-Star voting like last year’s trash in a landfill? Has there ever been serious talk about an MVP guy who is summarily dismissed by fans year after year?

The National Basketball Association makes it easy -- maybe too easy -- for fans to vote for the All-Star teams. You can do so in NBA arenas, in 19 languages on the NBA.com Network, in approximately 130 Loews Cineplex Entertainment movie theaters in the United States and through mobile phones using T-Mobile service. You might even be able to vote for the NBA All-Star teams in 15 minutes if you call Geico, but that has not been confirmed.

So despite all of those venues and chances to vote, the Pistons’ Chauncey Billups remains a bottom feeder in the latest ballotting numbers among Eastern Conference guards. In the latest results, Billups has 125,000+ votes, good for fifth place but light years behind the two guys who will most likely start: Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson (639,000) and Miami’s Dwyane Wade (480,000). Billups is even more than 200,000 votes behind New Jersey’s Vince Carter (363,000). Heck, he even trails New Jersey’s Jason Kidd by 30,000+, and Kidd is so 2000-01, ain’t he?

Oh, I know it’s all a popularity contest, and Billups will, in all likelihood, be selected to the team -- finally -- but only because the Eastern Conference coach stands to be the Pistons’ Flip Saunders. Still, to see Chauncey Billups that far behind the leaders is puzzling, because who exactly is doing more with the basketball, who is helping his team achieve success, more than Chauncey Billups at this point in the season?

I have seen Isiah Thomas break teams down with his penetration and dish-off ability, and drive stakes into their hearts with his jumpshooting. I have seen Magic Johnson lead deadly fastbreaks, make mind-numbing passes, and play like a power forward or center in the biggest games in the world. I know what Bob Cousy did for the Celtics, running that Parquet Floor Show.

Maybe Chauncey Billups isn’t, yet, in that circle of great point guards. But what he is doing for the Pistons right now -- hitting clutch shots, scoring almost at will, finding the right man constantly, overpowering other point guards with his size and strength, rebounding and playing hard-nosed defense, is more than any guard has done in Detroit in years.

The thing is, Billups has actually been doing all those things for a few years now, but this season he is doing them to the nth degree. Never before has he been this dominant, this confident, this much of a terror to opponents. But then again, never before has he played for Flip Saunders in Detroit. When Billups played for Saunders in Minnesota, he was unrefined, still trying to find his game. When he played for Larry Brown in Detroit, he was more refined but tethered still. But Flip Saunders has unleashed this moster on the rest of the NBA with his more wide open offense. If this was football, Flip Saunders would be Air Coryell to Larry Brown’s Steve "West Toast Offense" Mariucci.

All of this outstanding play, night after night, is causing whispers of "MVP" into people’s ears throughout the league. In fact, the growing consensus is that Billups was, indeed, the league MVP during the first third of this season. And that feeling is only going to grow if the Pistons keep winning at the white hot clip they are currently. A run at 70 wins wouldn’t harm Billups’ chances at MVP, either.

But despite all this, there Chauncey Billups sits, an also-ran in All-Star voting. Never has he, unbelievably, been an All-Star -- not even of the chosen-by-the-coach variety. Yet he has been MVP of the NBA Finals. And now, he may be the league MVP the same season he makes his first All-Star team.

If Flip Saunders picks him, that is.

Come on, Flip -- get loose.