NBA All-Star mock draft: Who will Steph Curry pick first of the reserves?

Fourteen reserves for the 2018 NBA All-Star Game were named on Tuesday after being elected by head coaches. We have four first-time all-stars to go with veterans of the process. The twist, of course, this year is that the game on Sunday, Feb. 18 won’t be a face-off between the conferences. Instead, captains LeBron James and Stephen Curry are drafting teams, which will be announced on Thursday, Jan. 25 on TNT.

If you have a draft, there must be a mock draft. This is a law of modern sports journalism. This is doubly important because the cowardly NBA refuses to televise the NBA All-Star Draft or even make the actual order of picks public! What terrible fan service.

Last week, we presented our mock draft for the starters, who must all get chosen by James and Curry before they dig into the reserves. We’ll use those as the base before mock drafting the 14 reserves. Here are the teams according to our starter mock.

Team LeBron: James, Kevin Durant, James Harden, DeMar DeRozan, DeMarcus Cousins.
Team Curry: Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving, Joel Embiid

James, the lead overall vote-getter, has first draw among the starters, Curry will pick first for the reserves portion.

Let’s mock.

Which one of my garbage teammates are you? This is a real pickle for GM Curry, who really must pick his two actual teammates before taking the best players. Green seems more likely than Klay Thompson to get even a tiny bit angry if Curry doesn’t take him right away, primarily because Thompson wouldn’t even care enough to piece together the circumstances that would require him not being on Team Curry.

Green goes first.

Sigh. Too bad about all the drama this week, or else James could have taken Thompson — which would have proved that Thompson wasn’t Curry’s No. 1 pick, potentially starting some bad blood if Thompson actually gave two sheets about this whole pageant. Alas, if James doesn’t end up with Love on his team, Lake Erie might erupt into a hellfire of takes. We wouldn’t want that.

Whew!

James reunites Westbrook and Durant while ensuring Westbrook gets to go at a bunch of Warriors, including Curry. Magnificient! This is the kind of drama we wanted to experience with a televised NBA All-Star Draft. The team dinner is going to be so awkward when Westbrook starts talking about wanting to dunk on Curry’s face sitting next to Durant.

Odds are Curry will have spreadsheets on when all of these guys are free agents in real life and will use this all-star escapade to recruit them to the Warriors. Two years until Butler to Golden State rumors heat up!

Wall is a Rich Paul client. That’s all you need to know here.

Curry, already with Anthony Davis, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Joel Embiid, starts a unicorn collection. There’s also the matter of James being less likely to pick Porzingis because the Latvian’s success (in a weird way) reflects poorly on friend-of-Bron Carmelo Anthony. This is all so complicated!

“I’m picking all the scoring point guards I like better than that damn Kyrie,” James told reporters after the draft.

UNICORN PARTY!

I bet you think this song is about you, Kyrie. (It is.) In related news, Lowry would be a perfect fit in the Cavaliers’ locker room. He’d be the snarky, absolutely hilarious dude trashing everyone to their face. We need this.

Legitimately, Oladipo is a dark horse all-star MVP candidate in the mold of Mitch Richmond in 1995, as long as he gets playing time. A first-timer who still has something to prove — especially to Westbrook, who is this exercise would be on the other team — and all the hallmarks of all-star excellence (hops, speed, attacking mentality). Get excited about ‘Dipo at all-star.

It’s too bad that Beal and Wall wouldn’t get a chance to play without each other. Perhaps James and Curry can work out a trade to give Wall and Beal one night of freedom.

Aldridge is a very deserving all-star who should only play like two-and-a-half minutes in the actual NBA All-Star Game.

We love you, Al Horford. Truly. Like LMA, you are deserving of your all-star nod. But no one wants you on a damn all-star team.

With that, here are our final mocked up teams.