Austin Rivers and one other player own the record for most years in the NBA without getting a single All-Star vote from another player.
The NBA All-Star process is a popularity contest, and that doesn’t just mean popularity with fans but with fellow players, too. That’s because, since 2016-17, the NBA has had active players and media join fans in the voting process for All-Star starters, with players’ votes counting for 25 percent of the overall total.
Naturally, some players started treating the process as a joke, voting for their teammates or friends to be All-Stars, deserving of the honor or not. Just this year, the likes of Jordan Walsh, Christian Wood and Yuki Kawamura received an All-Star vote from a fellow player. Wood hasn’t even played in a game yet this season.
That got us wondering about which players in NBA history have played the most seasons without earning a single All-Star vote from a fellow player. And one of the two players who holds the record for that feat shocked us.
Austin Rivers played seven seasons in the NBA after fellow players joined the All-Star voting process. And in that time, he never got a single All-Star vote from another player, a record he holds with Landry Shamet.
That’s despite Rivers’ two best campaigns in the NBA – 2016-17 and 2017-18 – coming right when players joined the All-Star vote. ’18 was the best season of Rivers’ career, with the talented 2-guard averaging 15.1 points and 4.0 assists on 37.8 percent shooting from three, far better marks than those of other players who did get All-Star votes from peers that season. (Even Sindarius Thornwell got an All-Star vote from a fellow player that year, in what was a rookie campaign that saw him average 3.9 points on the same Clippers team as Rivers.)
So this was a bit of a head-scratcher for us. Was Rivers really that unpopular amongst his peers that not a single one decided to throw him an All-Star vote, even as a joke? As you’re about to find out below, he’s one of the two most accomplished players on this list (the only player who might have been better than Rivers in the group below was Brandon Knight, but he was already slowed down by injuries in ’17 when players became part of the All-Star voting process). And Rivers was a big name, coming out of high school as an elite, well-known prospect, and heading to Duke to play for the legendary Mike Krzyzewski before getting to the NBA as a lottery pick. He’s also the son of long-time NBA player and head coach, Doc Rivers.
But maybe it was that nepotistic aspect of Rivers’ journey that made him unpopular with his peers. Or perhaps it was his playstyle, as Rivers became a defensive pest (compliment) in the NBA, one who would talk a fair amount of trash.
Or maybe it was simply by chance that another player never thought to throw Rivers an All-Star vote.
Whatever the reason was, below, you can check out the full ranking of the NBA players with the most seasons played to never get an All-Star vote from another NBA player.
