“A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.”

Okay, I’m not exactly experiencing déjà vu here. Because I don’t remember this happening. At all.

But apparently it did.

I mean… it freaking happened!

I was reading a post on Sactown Royalty by an author who goes by Exhibit G. He’s a really good writer and does a nice job of pontificating about the Sacramento Kings and where the entire organization and fan base stand. In the post, there is a point in which he mentions Jamaal Magloire and then throws in a brief mention that the former first round pick from Kentucky was once an All-Star.

And the crazy thing is that he’s not making that up. He’s not lying at all. It actually happened.

Perhaps, you’re asking yourself, “How does someone who’s allowed to post on Hardwood Paroxysm not know that Jamaal Magloire was once an All-Star in this league?”

That’s the thing; I do know that this happened but I don’t really remember it. I guess it’s just something that I’ve tried to push out of my memory as a human being – like the playing career of Troy Hudson or Dick Butkis taking over the head coaching job for the Deering High varsity basketball team. The fact that he was an All-Star still just never makes sense. It was arguably the biggest and unlikeliest occurrence in American professional sporting history.

First, let’s look back at that season for the New Orleans Hornets. It was their second year in the city of New Orleans and the place was buzzing (a really unfortunate choice of words and not meant as a pun at all) with excitement over their new basketball team. They were coming off of a 47-win season in their first year in Louisiana and Baron Davis was becoming a star. He was teamed with veterans like Jamal Mashburn and David Wesley and looked poised to make a deeper run in the playoffs than their previous first round exit.

But something weird happened that off-season – their head coach was fired. Not only was Paul Silas fired but he was fired after compiling a record of 186-142 (56.7 winning percentage) in four seasons. The reason was presumed to be the fact that he had a 13-16 playoff record but whatever the reason was, he was moved aside for and replaced with a confounding choice. The new head coach of the Hornets was Tim Floyd. Yes, THAT Tim Floyd.

The same Tim Floyd who had just finished compiling a 49-190 (20.5 winning percentage) record with a rebuilding and sputtering Chicago Bulls franchise. The same Tim Floyd who needed three full seasons worth of games to win two more games than what the team he was taking over had accomplished the previous season. And he was leading that team to a disappointing .500 season in which he’d never get to coach a tick off the clock of the following season. Instead, he’d eventually end up taking his coaching career and NBA money to USC (literally).

So that was the state of the team. But what was the state of the center position in the NBA that allowed for Jamaal Magloire to earn a spot on the often overly esteemed All-Star team? What was the state of the Eastern Conference that warranted Jamaal Magloire to be selected to battle with Ben Wallace against the duo of Yao Ming and Shaquille O’Neal?

Magloire made the team with pre-All-Star break numbers of 12.1 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 1.29 bpg, and field goal percentage of 46.9%. At the time, he was the seventh leading rebounder in the Eastern Conference behind Ben Wallace, Carlos Boozer, Jermaine O’Neal, Kenyon Martin, Lamar Odom, and Kenny Thomas (yes, THAT Kenny Thomas). In fact, Boozer and Odom by far had better numbers than Magloire did before the All-Star break that season and yet, Jamaal was playing in Los Angeles for the extravaganza that year.

So why not Odom? Maybe they thought if he was back in Los Angeles for a couple of days, he’d get hooked up with his weed dealer again and it would look bad for the league. So why not Boozer? Maybe the Cavs asked that he didn’t make an All-Star team since he was heading into free agency that summer and they didn’t want him to warrant big money from another team because he was now officially an All-Star, not knowing that he was just waiting in the wings to swindle a blind man.

But we all know the reason – it was a glitch in the system. The system used to be that there were five starters voted in by biased fans followed by a backup for each traditional position and then two wild cards entries that usually included a guard and a forward. By today’s standards, they’ve jettisoned the idea of there having to be a backup center and just allow the coach to select whoever seems most deserving and/or whoever is someone the coach can tolerate being around. But back then, Jamaal Magloire was the benefit of some good ole positionalist thinking. He was invited to the All-Star Game because he was a center, not because he was an All-Star.

And the crazy thing was he played really well in the All-Star Game. He scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds in 21 minutes. In fact, he took 16 shots in those 21 minutes. 16!!!! Who does he think he is – Von Wafer?

Hold on a sec, I have a couple more

Who does he think he is – Allen Iverson?
Who does he think he is – Isaiah Rider?
Who does he think he is – Darrick Martin?
Who does he think he is – Eddie House?
Okay, that’s probably enough.

Looking back, there was no real explanation for why he made it. It was arguably the most improbable All-Star selection in sports history. He wasn’t asked to come because a player was injured. He wasn’t asked to come because an injury replacement wouldn’t cancel his three-day trip to the Bahamas. He was a fourth year center averaging decent enough numbers on a playoff-bound team that wasn’t living up to expectations and was being coached by a coach with the 13^th lowest winning percentage in league history and he made the All-Star Game.

We’ll never see something like that ever again. There simply won’t be déjà vu with this type of occurrence in the NBA. In today’s age of sports and politics, if something like that was about to happen again then people would be asked to testify before some type of oversight committee on Capitol Hill.

But back then?

It was just a glitch in the system. I know that it happened but I can’t remember it at all.