Steph got stuffed.

The NBA announced the All-Star reserves yesterday, and the Knicks’ point guard, though eminently deserving, was omitted from the list of invitees for next weekend’s soiree in Denver. Adding insult to injury, the Eastern Conference coaches made two shockingly ill-informed selections to take the spots that rightfully belonged to Marbury and Orlando’s Steve Francis.

Of course, this hardly qualifies as news anymore. The coaches always complain about the fans’ selections as All-Star starters, and then they go and mess it up even worse when it’s time to pick the reserves. These are the same people who told us Wally Szczerbiak, Tyrone Hill, and Dale Davis were All-Stars; compared to those gaffes, this year is relatively free of controversy.

Let’s review the selections. For starters, we’ll give the coaches polite applause for correctly identifying the four no-brainers: Gilbert Arenas, Dwyane Wade, Paul Pierce, and Jermaine O’Neal. The selection of Ben Wallace at center likewise provokes few arguments. It’s the last two picks – Cleveland’s Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Washington’s Antawn Jamison – that raise an issue.

The mysterious selection of Ilgauskas almost certainly was an unintended consequence of how the voting is tallied. A few of the backup center votes went to Ilgauskas instead of Wallace, but with votes split among several worthy guards (including Marbury and Francis), that apparently was enough to get Ilgauskas in the door. This happens all too frequently in the East – look back at the squads from the past few seasons and you’ll see that big men are overrepresented despite the continued dominance of guards in the conference – and it’s something the league should look into changing.

The selection of Jamison is far less excusable. I have nothing against him as a player – he’s been a fine addition to the Wizards and a key to their resurgence – but as an All-Star he’s a joke. He’s the third-best player on a 28-19 team (after Arenas and the injured Larry Hughes), and my only guess is that the voters found his gaudy per game averages of 20.4 points and 8.2 rebounds irresistible.

Somehow, those numbers overwhelmed the coaches, and yet Marbury’s (20.7 points and 8.4 assists) and Francis’s (21.7 points, 7.0 assists) failed to catch their eye. New Jersey’s Jason Kidd is also having a better year than Jamison, albeit in fewer minutes, and so are Cleveland’s Drew Gooden (the third-best player on a team with the same record as Washington’s), Indiana’s Jamaal Tinsley, Detroit’s Chauncey Billups (the second-best player on a team with the same record), Milwaukee’s Michael Redd, and Boston’s Raef LaFrentz.

It’s not like Jamison got picked for his defense, either – he’s one of the weaker defenders at his position. All the players named above have posted a higher Player Efficiency Rating (my measure of a player’s per-minute statistical performance) than Jamison this season, and all except Gooden are better defenders.

Moreover, Jamison’s scoring average was fairly empty. He averages 0.999 points per shot attempt (a stat I invented that accounts for free-throws and 3-pointers), making him and Chris Webber the league’s only 20-point scorers with an average below 1.00. Marbury, meanwhile, averages 1.15. You can criticize him all you want for shooting too much, but the fact is that when he shoots it, he scores more often than most players.

That takes us to the biggest mark against Marbury’s candidacy – his team’s record. At 19-29, the Knicks are coming off a disastrous road trip and have played terrible basketball of late. But is that happening because of Marbury, or in spite of him? Yes, his defense isn’t great, but what would the Knicks’ record look like without Marbury?

The answer is that this team would have no chance of competing at all without Marbury, especially given the recent injury to Jamal Crawford. I can hear Mike Breen now: “And with tonight’s loss, Moochie Norris and Jamison Brewer have become the first starting backcourt in NBA history to go an entire month without hitting double figures.”

All told, it’s clearly unfair to leave Marbury off the All-Star team just because Tim Thomas left his game in Milwaukee and Isiah Thomas couldn’t find any good backups.

But at least he doesn’t get shafted annually. The same can’t be said for the Clippers’ Elton Brand.

Ever since his rookie year in Chicago, when Brand played great on an awful Bulls team but was passed up for the legendary Dale Davis, the league’s most underrated star has been routinely bypassed, many times in absolutely shameful votes. This year is no exception.

The Western coaches made five quality selections: Phoenix’s Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, and Shawn Marion; Dallas’s Dirk Nowitzki; and San Antonio’s Manu Ginobili. A sixth, Seattle’s Ray Allen, was reasonable, although Brand is having a better year.

Their final pick, though, was utterly indefensible. Like Jamison, Seattle’s Rashard Lewis is having a pretty good year for a surprising team. Apparently that has become the key to having the greatest minds in basketball put you on the All-Star team.

Size up Lewis and Brand and the absurdity of the selection becomes obvious. They’re roughly equal as scorers, with each averaging a hair over 20 points a game, and Lewis does it slightly more efficiently (1.14 points per shot attempt vs. 1.11). But Brand is much better at everything else: He averages nearly twice as many rebounds (9.9 to 5.5), and more than twice as many assists (2.7 to 1.1). Brand also is one of the league’s top shotblockers, averaging over 2.0 blocks per game compared to 0.9 for Lewis.

Also, despite the disparity in their teams’ records, the Clippers have been much better than the Sonics on defense, allowing nearly three points less per 100 opponent possessions. Brand is one of the key defenders on a decent defensive team, while Lewis is one of the weaker defenders on a bad defensive team – what were the coaches thinking?

Nobody in his right mind would trade Brand for Lewis, just as no sane person would trade Marbury for Jamison. Perhaps if the coaches thought things over in that light, they would make more reasoned selections each February. But until they do, get used to seeing supporting players on “surprise” teams wind up with undeserved invitations to the All-Star Game, while the Marburys and Brands of the world are at home watching.