The 25 best NBA players never to make an All-Star game — 3. Jason Terry
The league has been gifted with a number of prolific scorers over the years, and the vast majority of them have made the All-Star Game. Players who score a lot of points tend to get recognized for that accomplishment. Of the league’s top 100 career scorers, 97 of them have made at least one All-Star Game.
The common thread of those three players — Jamal Crawford, Eddie Johnson and Jason Terry — is that they all primarily came off the bench during their primes. All three won at least one Sixth Man of the Year award. Of the three, Terry was by far the most accomplished. He came off the bench, but he drove winning with his combination of on-ball scoring and quick hands on defense.
Terry was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in 1999 and played five seasons there before joining the Dallas Mavericks in 2004, where he would distinguish himself as one of the all-time greatest bench players. The Mavericks made the playoffs all eight seasons he was there, including two trips to the NBA Finals and a title in 2011. The Mavericks found success starting facilitating point guard Jason Kidd and a defensive 2-guard during much of Terry’s time there, bringing “The Jet” off the bench to punish opposing second-units, before often closing games with Terry.
From 2007-08 to 2011-12, Terry played 424 games (regular and postseason) with the Mavericks but started just 73 of them (17.2%). That did not stop him from putting up numbers, as he averaged at least 15 points per game each of those five seasons, and his 19.6 per-game average in 2008-09 won him the Sixth Man of the Year award. He was specifically a great shooter both off-the-dribble and off-the-catch, and he ranks seventh all-time in made 3-pointers.
Terry coming off the bench should not have prevented him from making an All-Star Game. He ranks 66th in career points scored, 27th in minutes played and 10th in games, yet he never made an All-Star game despite being on successful teams in Dallas. Even if you have the all-powerful points-per-game on your side, coming off the bench appears to be a death sentence for your All-Star chances.
Closest Call: The Dallas Mavericks won 50 games in the 2008-09 season, and Terry was a driving force with nearly 20 points per game. It’s possible he would have broken through even with the bench stigma, but he was stymied by an explosion of offensive players in a packed Western Conference. Terry was clearly a deserving All-Star on a good team, but so was every other player named to the team ahead of him. In the East, Terry would have easily made it.