ESPN: Two Players Will Lose This Very Game Including Tyrese Haliburton…

With the league set to announce the 14 All-Star reserves tonight, it’s time to reveal my full 2023-24 All-Star teams. As always, this is both fun and agonizing. You get 12 spots per conference. Not 14. Not 15. Just 12. There will be pain.

I start from scratch and follow the same positional rules as the fans in choosing starters (two guards, three frontcourt players) and the coaches in picking the seven reserves (two guards, three frontcourt, two wild cards).

• Haliburton, Brunson, Mitchell, and Maxey have been the East’s four best guards, with Maxey trailing the first three by a hair. Haliburton has missed 13 games, but he has the best numbers — and by a lot in some categories. There is no magical games-played threshold; each voter has his or her own criteria. I feel funny once a player has missed more than one-third of the season. Games missed is a useful tiebreaker. Team success can serve the same purpose.

But sometimes a player is so spectacular, the games and minutes don’t matter as much. That’s the case for Embiid and Haliburton. The numbers speak for themselves, but Haliburton’s impact transcends the objectively measurable. He has imprinted his swashbuckling style and broader basketball philosophy upon an entire franchise — and helped drag it from the lottery back into respectability faster than even its higher-ups expected.

He’s healthy now, and by mid-February those 13 missed games should amount to a much smaller percentage of Indiana’s overall schedule.

Mitchell and Brunson are very close. Mitchell has the edge in scoring volume and knifing north-south power; Brunson has shot much better on 3s. Advanced stats (barely) lean Mitchell. This is a case where the gap in minutes and games — Brunson has logged 400 more minutes — breaks the tie. Both are locks, but Brunson deserved the honor of starting — and certainly over Lillard.

Mitchell and Maxey snare the first two reserve spots here.

• Reserve ballot rules require three of the remaining five spots go to frontcourt players. That leaves only two more spots for guards, where the candidate pool is deepest. There isn’t much difference between my frontcourt choices — Adebayo, Randle, Brown — and the next group of Banchero, Pascal Siakam, Scottie Barnes and Jarrett Allen. I wouldn’t argue too much with almost any combination of those three. (Honorable mention to DeMar DeRozan, Kristaps Porzingis, and a few others.)

Advanced stats favor Barnes, who has made a huge leap as a shooter and all-around offensive engine. He leads this group in assists, blocks, steals, and 3-point shooting. It’s hard to leave him out. But both he and the Toronto Raptors still seem to be feeling out how and when to lean into each of his discrete skills.

There’s something unformed about Barnes in comparison to these other guys. That’s not a knock; it’s almost the opposite. It makes him more exciting going forward. The Siakam and OG Anunoby trades muddied that process. Barnes’ defensive ceiling is high, but the execution is up and down, which is typical for young players.

There is also a threshold of losing at which it is hard to make an All-Star game unless someone’s statistical edge is overwhelming. The Raptors at 17-30 are below that threshold.

• Adebayo has slumped along with the reeling Heat, but he’s a two-way rock averaging 21 points, 10.5 rebounds, and 4 dimes — with a proven record of impacting winning at the highest level. He has been Miami’s closest thing to a constant amid injuries and underwhelming play from just about everyone else — including Jimmy Butler, who falls short here. Butler has missed 15 games and not been the same all-court wrecker when available. (That’s shifting again; Butler has looked mean and bouncy in Miami’s last three games — including their streak-busting win over the Sacramento Kings Wednesday. We know how good that version of Butler is: an All-NBA-level player who ratchets it up in the playoffs. He has been very good this season. If you want him in, I can’t quibble.)

• Randle is not everyone’s cup of tea, and he is the anti-Adebayo in that his game has collapsed in the postseason. But he has been dynamite since an ugly first half-dozen games — No. 1 among these guys in scoring, No. 2 in both assists and rebounds, and shooting 54% on 2s. He still holds the ball too much on some nights, but he has sped up his decision-making. He’s attacking faster off the catch, and whipping passes a beat earlier when he spots the defense in rotation. Randle is even cutting harder off the ball.

The Knicks’ brute-force identity radiates from Randle — those shoulder-checking, pointy-elbowed drives that send defenders careening into the stanchion. His defense comes and goes, but he’s solid when he dials in.

• OK, time for the Jaylen Brown conversation. He’s a tad overrated. He’s averaging 22.6 points, down from 26.6 last season. Advanced numbers frown upon him, likely due to his unreliable decision-making; he’s averaging 3.7 assists and 2.4 turnovers. Those advanced numbers paint him as a mediocre and sometimes inattentive defender.

There are some smart executives and coaches who aren’t sure if Brown is the second- or even third-best player on the Celtics; a good chunk of them — probably a majority — would nominate White as Boston’s second All-Star. But we need another frontcourt player, and the Celtics need at least one more All-Star after Tatum. Brown is eligible at frontcourt. White is not.

Some of those Brown skeptics would then elect Porzingis as the second Boston All-Star, and Porzingis’ combination of shooting and rim protection indeed transforms the Celtics into an entirely different team. But Porzingis has missed 14 games and averages only 29.8 minutes. He has maybe the coziest set-up of any All-Star candidate. Boston does not ask him to do much shot creation on offense aside from mashing smaller guys in the post — which he has done with effective cruelty.