The 69th NBA All-Star Games will be on Feb. 17 (PH time) at the United Center in Chicago. Voting for the All-Star participants started last Christmas and will end on Jan. 21. Fans account for 50% of the votes for the 10 starters of both conferences. 25% comes from active players who can vote for themselves, and the other 25% will come from the media. A ballot consists of 3 frontcourt players and 2 backcourt players.
The starters and the team captains will be announced on January 24, while the reserves selected by NBA head coaches will be announced on January 31. The two players from the Western and Eastern Conferences will become the captains of the respective teams.
Initial ballot results have Luka Doncic, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, James Harden and Kawhi Leonard leading in the Western Conference, while Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Pascal Siakam, Trae Young and Kyrie Irving are the highest vote getters in the East.
For several years, the All-Star Games had become a popularity contest that more deserving players had been snubbed. I understand that this mid-season, the high-profile pickup game is for the fans, but there must be some representation from the other NBA teams. Injured players and those who had become popular through their hairdos or in some other ways got higher votes than those who had actually did quality time on the hardcourt.
Irving recently returned to play for Brooklyn, yet fans gave him votes higher than Kemba Walker, Kyle Lowry and teammate Spencer Dinwiddie, who’s doing an excellent job in his absence. Boston’s Tacko Fall played a total of 10 minutes in only 3 games, tallying 13 points and 7 rebounds, but he’s got better love from fans than Bam Adebayo, teammate Gordon Hayward, Andre Drummond and Domantas Sabonis.
Over at the West, Stephen Curry, who also just played 3 games, got more votes than Russell Westbrook, teammate D’Angelo Russell and Donovan Mitchell. Lakers’ cult hero Alex Caruso is more popular than Devin Booker who had six straight 30+ points game in the process, breaking the Phoenix Suns record made by Charles Barkley.
The top 10 vote getters come from 9 teams and the next 30 players come from the other 14 other teams. Because coaches will pick the reserves, they will most likely select from the players who are already on the ballots. Fat chance they’ll pick players from teams like Sacramento, Oklahoma, San Antonio, Cleveland, Charlotte, Orlando and New York who failed to have players on the balloting.
Maybe the league can initiate changes next time in the mid-season exhibitions so that at least the players, who had shown All-Star performances but lack fan support because they belong to small market teams, get recognized. We could show some love to the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (OKC), Bogdan Bogdanovic (SAC) and Nikola Vucevic (ORL)./PN
