Caron Butler: Fantasy All-Star

Caron Butler was named by the coaches as a reserve to the Eastern Conference All-Star team for the first time in his career last year. Will he repeat this year? From the returns thus far, it seems that if he makes a return to the game on Sunday this year, it will again be as a reserve. Being an owner of Butler, I think he’s put up numbers that qualify, but KG, and LBJ so far have a commanding lead, and rightly so. As an article in USA today has pointed out, KG, LBJ, and Butler are the only players in the entire league averaging at least 20 points, 6 rebounds, and 4 assists. What’s puzzling and slightly irksome is the fact that Chris Bosh, Paul Pierce, and Yi Jianlian are numbers 3, 4, and 5 respectively in the fan voting.

Let’s take a closer look at these three players from a fantasy standpoint. Butler has Pierce beat in every meaningful fantasy category except 3ptm. While Pierce is great player, it’s just amazing the magnitude of the halo effect of playing with KG. Last year Pierce was putting up similar numbers on a terrible Boston team and the idea of him being voted onto the All-Star team was a joke. Likewise, Butler has far more impact on a fantasy roster than Bosh. Although Bosh rebounds and blocks more shots, Caron is equivalent or better in all other categories. The only way Bosh would make a fantasy all-star team would be as a center. And Yi Jianlian? The numbers simply aren’t even close. Luckily, he’s not as popular as Yao yet, and couldn’t possibly get voted in as a reserve by the coaches. We’ll see you in the Rookie-Sophomore game for the next two years while you develop, Yi.

This goes to show that fan popularity is not always correlated to fantasy performance. It’ll be interesting if this changes in the future as more people get involved in fantasy hoops.