How Many All-NBA 1st/2nd Players in History Were Not All-Stars...

[GreenlyGreeny]

...within their first four years? Does anybody know? Do any come immediately to mind? All-NBA 1st and All-NBA 2nd exclusively (i.e., roughly the ten superstars of any given year), so disregard All-NBA 3rd.

[keevsnick]

Kawhi Leonard

[mr. dee]

I don't know about first four years but Mike Conley was a 2nd All-NBA in 2013.

[rondofan1255]

Tony Parker
LaMarcus Aldridge

[RPGenerate]

Isaiah Thomas
Demar Derozan
Stephen Curry
Demarcus Cousins
Joakim Noah
Andrew Bynum (lol)
Deron Williams
Chauncey Billups
Sam Cassell
and that's just going back to 2000.

[bdm860]

So if the question your asking is how many guys who eventually went on to make an All-NBA Team (1st or 2nd) in any season, without making an All-Star game in their first 4 years, then there's definitely a few:


Our man Isaiah Thomas immediately jumps out.  All-NBA 2nd team, didn't make an All-Star game until his 5th season at age 26.

Steve Nash (2x MVP, 5x 1st or 2nd team) didn't make an All-Star game until his 6th season at age 27.

Steph Curry (2x MVP, 5x 1st or 2nd team) didn't make an All-Star game until his 5th season at age 25.

DeMar DeRozan (2nd team All-NBA) didn't make an All-Star game until his 5th season.

Rudy Gobert (2nd team All-NBA) has never made an All-Star game so far in 6 seasons.

DeAndre Jordan (1st team All-NBA) made only 1 All-Star game in his 9th season at age 28.

Ben Wallace (3x 2nd team All-NBA) didn't make an All-Star game until his 7th season.

Jermaine O'Neal (2nd team All-NBA) didn't make an All-Star game until his 6th season (but was only 17 when drafted).

Sam Cassell (2nd team All-NBA) didn't make an All-Star game until his 11th season at age 34.

Plus the guys already mentioned (Kawhi, Parker, Aldridge).

And that's just me browsing the list going back about 15 years, definitely more.

Interesting question though, looking some guys up, it seems like most guys who go on to be superstars make an All-Star game by their 3rd or 4th year (with a very select few making it in the 1st or 2nd year).  Only a few true superstars (Curry, Nash, Kawhi) do it after, while the rest are more All-NBA flukes and never really consistently considered MVP tier players.

(Edit, and I see RPGenerate beat me to a bunch).

[rondofan1255]

Iirc (?) Kawhi got hurt and missed a chunk of games before the 2014-2015 season All-Star Break

Otherwise that was his breakout year offensively and he was considered a likely all-star pre-injury (?)

[fairweatherfan]

Steph Curry (2x MVP, 5x 1st or 2nd team) didn't make an All-Star game until his 5th season at age 25.

I remember the year before his first appearance was the first year you could tell the Warriors were coming up, but even though Steph was clearly the best player they gave the all-star nod to David Lee. That decision aged well.

[Androslav]

There was a beautiful player nicknamed Amadeus, The Mozart of basketball.
Dražen Petrović was a 3rd team All-NBA in 92-93, in his fourth and his last season, but he was never an NBA all-star.
He was 28 years old because of the time he played he is a bit of an anomaly in the case of this exercise.
Here are the most noticeable honours he recieved:

Team:
Olimpic games: 2x silver ('88, '92), 1x bronze ('84)
FIBA WC: 1x gold ('90), 1x bronze ('86)
FIBA EuroBasket: 1x gold ('87), 2x bronze ('87, '93)
Europen cup: 2x winner ('85, '86) 

Individual:
FIBA World Championship MVP (1986)
FIBA EuroBasket MVP (1989)
2× EuroLeague champion (1985, 1986)
EuroLeague Finals Top Scorer (1985)
FIBA European Selection (1987)
4× Euroscar (1986, 1989, 1992, 1993)
2× Mr. Europa Award (1986, 1993)
2× FIBA Saporta Cup champion (1987, 1989)
2× FIBA Saporta Cup Finals Top Scorer (1987, 1989)
FIBA Korać Cup Finals Top Scorer (1988)
Spanish League Top Scorer (1989)
Spanish Cup Final Top Scorer (1989)
FIBA's 50 Greatest Players (1991)

[GreenlyGreeny]

Interesting question though, looking some guys up, it seems like most guys who go on to be superstars make an All-Star game by their 3rd or 4th year (with a very select few making it in the 1st or 2nd year). 

Who wants to complete the exercise of listing the ones who did it within their first four years, listed by year:

1st Year:

2nd Year:

3rd Year:

4th Year:

Once we have that info, we can create a ballpark statistic of the probability of a player becoming a superstar without making an all-star game in their first four seasons. This will inform us of what the estimate would be of the chance of Brown and Tatum becoming superstars if they’re not an all-star before the end of their rookie contract.

Superstars win championships, so this is pretty darn important in my book.