Brett Brown calls out NBA for snubbing TJ McConnell from Rising Stars Challenge
With T.J. McConnell starting at point guard, all the Philadelphia 76ers do is win, win, win, and head coach Brett Brown thinks that should have merited an inclusion in the Rising Stars Challenge on All-Star Weekend.
After the Sixers defeated the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday for their 10th victory in 13 games, Brown called out the NBA for snubbing McConnell.
“We are 9-2 with him as a starter,” Brown said, per ESPN. “T.J. McConnell should be in that game.”
Granted, the 24-year-old McConnell isn’t flashy and is instead more of an intangibles guy focused on defense and playmaking. His individual averages of 5.2 points and 5.9 assists per game in 2016-17 aren’t particularly impressive either, and the fact that he went undrafted tends to put him under the radar.
But that win-loss record doesn’t lie, and when you see some of the arguably less-deserving players who made it in over McConnell (for example, Suns rookie Marquese Chriss, Jazz guard Dante Exum, and even McConnell’s own teammate Jahlil Okafor), it’s easy to see where Brown is coming from.
H/T NBA Reddit