Inside the All-Star voting numbers: The NBA is a tough crowd
James appeared on 56% of the ballots, Durant on 55%
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NBA players are apparently not easily impressed — even by other NBA players.
LeBron James and Kevin Durant were the only two players to appear on more than 50% of the ballots cast by their playing peers in All-Star Game starter balloting this season, based on a review of the numbers released by the league.
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James appeared on 56% of the ballots, Durant on 55%.
They wound up as the leading votegetters from fans as well for this year’s game, which is set for March 7 in Atlanta. As the fan-vote leaders, James and Durant were picked to serve as the playing captains in the game and draft teams that will be unveiled March 4.
The other eight starters — Stephen Curry, Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, Kawhi Leonard, Bradley Beal, Kyrie Irving, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo — were announced Thursday as well, along with James and Durant. The 14 reserve spots will be announced Tuesday after NBA head coaches cast ballots.
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Antetokounmpo appeared on 47% of player ballots, Curry on 45%, Embiid and Jokic both on 44% and Beal on 42%.
Leonard got 28% support from players, Irving 26% and Doncic just 15%.
Doncic got the second guard spot from the Western Conference over Portland’s Damian Lillard. The NBA’s weighted system — where fan voting counts for 50%, media voting 25% and player voting the remaining 25% — had them both tied for second behind Curry.
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Doncic got the nod because he got more fan votes; Lillard, however, more than doubled his support among players and media. Lillard got 34% support from players, and 64% of the media voters chose Lillard compared with 30% for Doncic.
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The All-Star voting system was changed after 768,112 people voted for Zaza Pachulia in 2016 and nearly made him a starter. Pachulia’s "candidacy" was fueled by social-media influencers and many votes from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, his homeland.
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As part of those changes, players got to be part of the process.
Not all of them take it seriously.
This year, a record 310 players got at least one vote to be a starter, either from themselves or another NBA player. That’s 18 more than the previous record, set last year, and 21 more than the player total from 2019.
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Of those 310 players, 108 of them got exactly one vote.
Many players who haven’t even appeared in a game or scored this season got multiple votes. Among the eye-raisers: the Los Angeles Lakers' Kostas Antetokounmpo got 10 votes despite not yet scoring this season; Memphis' Justice Winslow got two votes even though he has not appeared in a game for more than a year; and Toronto's Patrick McCaw got a vote despite not playing yet this season while dealing with a knee injury.