2009 NBA All Stars

By just about any standard, North Carolina, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and UCLA are the top five teams in college basketball. But not when you're talking about producing NBA All-Stars -- not this year, anyway. The Kansas Jayhawks are the only one of those five teams that will be represented at the 2009 NBA All Star Game -- Boston's Paul Pierce has the honor.

The "power conferences" didn't fare much better in this year's all star selections. There are as many players from the Mountain West (Indiana's Danny Granger, who played at New Mexico) and Conference USA (Dwyane Wade played for Marquette before they jumped to the Big East) as from the mighty Big East (Allen Iverson), Big Ten (Wisconsin's Devin Harris), or Pac 10 (Washington's Brandon Roy) and as many from the Atlantic Ten (Jameer Nelson of St. Joseph's and David West of Xavier) as the Big 12 (Pierce and Colorado's Chauncey Billups) or SEC (Shaquille O'Neal from LSU and Joe Johnson, from Arkansas). The ACC is the only conference with as many as three all stars, with two Wake Forest Demon Deacons (Tim Duncan and Chris Paul) and one Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket (Chris Bosh).

Ten of the 24 all stars didn't play in college at all... six made the jump to the NBA directly from high school -- Kevin Garnett, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Amar'e Stoudemire, and Rashard Lewis, and international arrivals Yao Ming (China), Dirk Nowitzki (Germany), Tony Parker (France) and Pau Gasol (Spain) complete the rosters.

2009 NBA All Stars

Player	NBA Team	College Team	College Conference
Rashard Lewis	Orlando	Alief Elsik HS (TX)	n/a
Joe Johnson	Atlanta	Arkansas	SEC
Yao Ming	Houston	China	n/a
Chauncey Billups	Denver	Colorado	Big 12
Amare Stoudemire	Phoenix	Cypress Creek (Orlando, FL)	n/a
Kevin Garnett	Boston	Farragut Academy (HS)	n/a
Tony Parker	San Antonio	France	n/a
Allen Iverson	Detroit	Georgetown	Big East
Chris Bosh	Toronto	Georgia Tech	ACC
Dirk Nowitzki	Dallas	Germany	n/a
Paul Pierce	Boston	Kansas	Big 12
Shaquille O'Neal	Phoenix	Louisiana State	SEC
Kobe Bryant	L.A. Lakers	Lower Merion HS	n/a
Dwyane Wade	Miami	Marquette	C-USA
Danny Granger	Indiana	New Mexico	Mountain West
Jameer Nelson	Orlando	Saint Joseph's	A-10
Pau Gasol	L.A. Lakers	Spain	n/a
LeBron James	Cleveland	St. Vincent/St. Mary HS	High School
Dwight Howard	Orlando	SW Atlanta Christian Academy (GA)	n/a
Chris Paul	New Orleans	Wake Forest	ACC
Tim Duncan	San Antonio	Wake Forest	ACC
Brandon Roy	Portland	Washington	Pac 10
Devin Harris	New Jersey	Wisconsin	Big 10
David West	New Orleans	Xavier (OH)	A-10