By: Kylan Watson
Last night, the National Basketball Association announced the starters for the NBA’s All-Star game for Sunday, February 19th 2016. There were a few surprise starter’s announced for the game, one of them being Stephen Curry over Russell Westbrook, and Joel Embiid not being named a starter for the Eastern Conference. After this happened does the NBA need to decrease the impact of fan votes for the all-star game?
The starters for the Western Conference All-Stars are Stephen Curry, James Harden, Kawaii Leonard, Kevin Durant and Anthony Davis. On the Eastern Conference side the starters are; Kyrie Irving, DeMar DeRozan, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounpo, and Jimmy Butler.
Out of all these names DeRozan as a starter for the Eastern Conference is a huge surprise, because a lot of people thought Joel Embiid would be a starter for the Eastern Conference All-Stars. Embiid is averaging 23.0 points per game and is leading the league in blocks and rebounds. Embiid also garnered about 900,000 votes from the fans. He was in the top 4 in fan votes and the top 5 in player and media member votes. That is not the only thing though Steph Curry is starting over Russell Westbrook. Westbrook is averaging a triple double and is the top scorer in the league and he is not starting. That is the biggest surprise of this week in the NBA. Westbrook also finished in the top 5 in fan voting and in the top 3 in player and media votes.
Both Westbrook and Embiid have a chance to be named as reserves for their respective conferences, but it may be time for the NBA to reconsider having fan votes account for 50% of the all-star game starter results. I know the NBA values their fans, but this result alone could be a reason to decrease or get rid of fan votes as a whole, even though the game is for the fans.
