The Big Cactus is a big mistake...

...for the coach's pick as an All-Star reserve that is.

Shaquille O'Neal was chosen as a reserve for the Western Conference All-Stars this year, and I don't think it was a proper choice.

Not over Al Jefferson. Not even over Andris Biedrins, who plays for my favorite team, the Golden State Warriors.

Just so I don't look too biased for mentioning Biedrins, let me say that Shaq isn't a better center than Denver's Nene either.

I'm mostly basing these conclusions on statistics. I don't know that that's the best way to back up an argument about something like this. But I believe it's a darn good way.

Shaq isn't even in the top 100 of Yahoo.com's Fantasy Basketball average player rankings (based on per game stats). A player like that does not deserve to be an All-Star, and it doesn't matter that we're not talking about fantasy hoops here.

The truth is that the players whom most people would consider to be All-Star caliber fall somewhere in the top 50 in the Yahoo.com rankings. You can't play fantasy basketball and win without an All-Star caliber player on your team. But like I said, Shaq isn't even top 100.

The funny thing is that he isn't even on a particularly good team this year, so saying that his team's record had something to do with it isn't really all that true. Nene's Nuggets have a better record than O'Neal's Suns, but Nene doesn't get to play in this year's game.

But O'Neal is a more popular player. He just isn't, however, the best player available for the All-Star game. And that diminishes what I think is the point of that game in the first place, which is to see the best players in the NBA play against each other.

But that's just me.