It’s time once again for the NBA’s annual ritual. No, not All-Star Weekend. Not even Valentine’s Day. I’m talking about All-Star selection week, the baffling series of decisions made by the coaches who choose the weekend’s reserves. Every year produces a few head-scratchers, and this season is no exception.

First, the good news. This year’s All-Star Game selections only produced two What-Were-They-Thinking moments, and one of them was immediately corrected thanks to an injury. Normally the coaches can be counted on to screw up at least four spots between the two conferences.

But let’s not give them a pat on the back just yet. Two glaring omissions in the backcourt – one in each conference – marred what otherwise was one of their better efforts.

In the East, that player was Washington’s Gilbert Arenas. The league’s fourth-leading scorer, Arenas has single-handedly kept Washington over .500 despite the loss of second-leading scorer Larry Hughes to free agency. In a mystifying decision, Arenas lost out on the East’s final backcourt spot to Detroit’s Richard Hamilton.

I have nothing against Hamilton, a fine player who will be making his first trip to the All-Star game. I’m sure the league’s coaches felt compelled to choose him because he’s the leading scorer on basketball’s best team, but Hamilton is so one-dimensional that he still can’t light a candle to Arenas. Forget that the Wizards’ point man averages nearly seven points per game more than Hamilton – he also hands out twice as many assists and steals, and even outrebounds the Pistons’ swingman.

Unfortunately, Arenas (and to a lesser extent, Milwaukee’s Michael Redd) was the unfortunate victim of the “pick five Pistons” movement, in which a few Eastern coaches decided that all five Detroit starters deserved inclusion on the team. If Detroit had remained on pace to break Chicago’s record mark of 72-10, this would have been more justifiable, if still a bit overenthusiastic. But as it was, Detroit wasn’t 42-5 at the time of the voting, they were a more mortal 39-8,and in fact only two games ahead of Dallas and San Antonio.

However, the movement to take five Detroit players rather than just the two who are genuinely deserving (sharpshooter Chauncey Billups and defensive ace Ben Wallace) resulted in the additional inclusion of Hamilton and hotheaded forward Rasheed Wallace. That necessitated the exclusion of Arenas and one other player – most likely Redd or Cleveland’s Zydrunas Ilgauskas. As the chart shows, Arenas ranks 13th in the league in Player Efficiency Rating (PER, my per-minute rating of a player’s statistical production) and Redd is 25th. Meanwhile, Hamilton and Wallace are 30th and 43rd, respectively. Incidentally, Nets point guard Jason Kidd also has a legitimate gripe – he out-PERs Hamilton and is a vastly better defender to boot.

Out West, we had an even bigger headscratcher – the scandalous selection of Seattle’s Ray Allen ahead of brilliant Hornets rookie Chris Paul. Paul’s spectacular play hasn’t received as much attention as it deserves because his team is never on TV and, like Kidd, he makes a lot of his impact in non-scoring categories. He’s averaging “just” 16.1 points per game, which doesn’t exactly scream out All-Star, but an examination of his all-court brilliance makes it obvious he belongs. Paul averages a nearly Kidd-like 7.7 assists and 5.5 boards a game from the point guard spot and is an exquisite defender as well.

That last point is an important distinction in differentiating him from Allen. While Paul is a key defender on one of the most improved defensive teams in the league, Allen is one of the worst defenders on what may well be the worst defensive team of all time. Thus, while Allen rates close to Paul on the PER charts, there is a wide gulf between the two in real-world value. Besides, Allen isn’t even the highest-rated Sonic, which may make this year’s vote the first time in history the second-best player from a 20-30 team received an All-Star bid.

Moreover, Paul’s exclusion is borderline insulting when you consider the backstory. The Hornets were openly rebuilding – even literally, following the Hurricane that destroyed their city – after an 18-64 season last year. But instead of sinking to the bottom of the standings, the club rallied around its star rookie and, as of today, would be the fifth seed in the Western Conference playoffs. This isn’t worthy of an All-Star nod?

In addition to the indefensible omission of Paul, some also questioned whether the coaches erred by placing Memphis’s Pau Gasol on the team ahead of Denver’s Carmelo Anthony. In this case, I have to side with the coaches. Gasol has been slightly better this year and, other than Billups, is the best player in the game never to have been selected. Now he can pass that honor on to Anthony, who certainly can look forward to future All-Star bids given his youth and talent.

In addition to a few wacky All-Star selections, the choices for the other events were pretty goofy too. The league’s assistant coaches voted on the invites to the Rookie-Sophomore game and showed us why they’re only assistants, selecting obviously unworthy participants like Houston’s Luther Head and Milwaukee’s T.J. Ford instead of superior performers like Atlanta’s Salim Stoudamire and Boston’s Delonte West.

And of course, it wouldn’t be All-Star Weekend without the annual ploy to get some attention for the WNBA. This year it’s an insipid event called Shooting Stars, which features four teams comprised of a current and former NBA player plus one WNBA player, and replaces insipid events of yore like “2-ball.” It’s sure to spark a mass run for the bathrooms in between the 3-point Shootout and the Dunk Contest.

Fortunately, almost no amount of erroneous personnel selection can screw up the wonder of All-Star Weekend. All the biggest stars in the game will be there (well, except Chris Paul), and unrestrained by annoyances such as zone defenses and traveling violations, they’ll be free to show off the awesome athleticism that makes the NBA so amazing. That’s why it’s still an annual ritual we can all get excited about.

Mr. Hollinger is the author of the 2005-06 Pro Basketball Forecast. He can be reached at jhollinger@nysun.com.