Larry Brown Sports

Josh Smith is having another strong all-around season for the Hawks, so he was understandably disappointed that he didn’t make the All-Star team. He thinks he didn’t get in because of political reasons.

“You’ve got to factor in there is a lot of politics involved in the All-Star selection,” Smith said Friday. “Once you get that it’s really about politics, then nothing really surprises you. I call it ‘Nothing But Associates,’ NBA. It’s all who you know.”

J-Smoove wasn’t voted in as a starter by the fans, but the coaches could have selected him as a reserve. He thinks campaigning for a spot could have gone a long way.

“I can’t really point a finger and blame anybody because, at the end of the day, when you leave it up to certain people that still have ties to their agents, [and] players in this game today probably [are] just putting in a bid over the phone, or however they do it,” he said. “You have to factor that in.”

The 26-year-old forward is in his eighth season in the NBA and has yet to make an All-Star team. A big reason why he was left off is because there is so much competition at the forward position in the Eastern Conference. The guys who made it ahead of him all deserved a spot. Paul Pierce, Andre Iguodala, and Luol Deng are all very good players on winning teams. Maybe Smith deserved a spot over Deng or Iguodala, but not Pierce. But he’s not the only guy who was left out — Ryan Anderson, Carlos Boozer, and Danny Granger all can make great cases too.

The best way to set yourself up for a bid in the future is by complaining in the present. This might help Smoove for next year.

The Atlanta Hawks polished off the Orlando Magic 4-2 in their first-round series of the NBA Playoffs. The Hawks were leading the series 3-1 but lost Game 5 to Orlando, prompting the series to go to a sixth game. It was then that Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi crushed the Hawks in his column and declared the Magic would win.

Some of the highlights from the column:

The Magic are going to win this series and the Birdbrains are going to fold up and collapse like a $5 lawn chair. You know it, I know it and deep down in the lonely recesses of their fragile minds, the Birdbrains know it, too.

No matter how much talent they have, the Hawks are still the Hawks. They are still Team Dummy. They will always do stupid things and take stupid shots. They will always lose their focus and their composure

Apparently some of those quotes were distributed to the Hawks players prior to Game 6, and afterwards forward Josh Smith admitted Bianchi’s criticism served as a motivating factor for Atlanta:

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