A Few Thoughts on NBA All-Star Voting
Dr.Strangevote or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love All-Star
The NBA’s marquee mid-season event has fallen on tough times. And I’m not talking about the trade deadline. The All-Star game, once the game’s greatest in-season display of talent, has become a bungled mess. No one wants to participate in it, no one, allegedly, wants to watch it, and every year or so there is another gimmick to fruitlessly save the event. Like an expired gallon of milk, you best throw it out before it explodes because not even god can salvage the putrid sludge that remains.
However, I find everything around the All-Star’s demise incredibly hyperbolic. Yes, the game is awful to watch for me, and almost certainly you, but that misses a crucial point. The All-Star game isn’t for us, or the players, or the media, or the league. The All-Star game is for a certain subset of fans, mostly children, and we ought to cater to their ridiculous needs, like a birthday party at Charles Entertainment Cheese, instead of forcing our sentiments on the event.
What sent me down this rabbit (or rat) hole was my dismay that LaMelo Ball wasn’t going to start the All-Star game even after leading the fan vote among Eastern Conference guards. And despite his overwhelming popularity among the voters, there’s considerable concern the coaches won’t select him as a reserve. Personally, I found this to be ridiculous. Regardless of what you think of Ball, if the people want to see his carnival act, let them.
To rectify wrongs, I wanted to see if I could change the current All-Star voting weight system to get Ball into the game. It’s currently a weighted rank average, and I thought perhaps using a weighted vote Z-Scores could get Ball in there. Long story short, I couldn’t. I could close the gap, but the media and player vote overwhelmed the data. But in my failure, a new, better idea dawned on me. What the fuck are we doing? Seriously, why are we letting the media and players, two groups that vehemently despise the All-Star game, have such an outsized influence on who participates?
Among media votes, 29 individual players received a vote, and only 12 players received greater than 10 votes. The media groupthink around All-Star is impregnable. LaMelo Ball, a man averaging 28.2 points per game and the most popular guard in the East by fan vote, received three media votes. Players were more diverse with their votes, but unsurprisingly, the people who don’t find the All-Star game fun are the ones taking it far too seriously.
I’m well aware of why the NBA changed its voting system. In 2016, Zaza Pachulia racked up gaudy fan vote totals and was almost an All-Star starter. To prevent a journeyman center, who would probably love to be there and take it seriously, the NBA stepped in and watered down the fan vote by adding player and media votes. But to quote the Joker, “Why so serious?”
Something I absolutely hate, that is all too commonly heard in NBA circles, is the line, “What are people going to think in 30 years if…….” You’ll hear it when a player is going for a third-straight MVP, or when a rookie role-player helps winning more than the hyped first-overall pick and has a case for Rookie of the Year, and when there’s a silly All-Star vote. We live in 2025. Donald Trump is President, AGAIN. There are far more important concerns about what future people will think of us than if the All-Star game is a silly time capsule for a singular NBA season. Seriously, I implore you, and the NBA for that matter, to go through the voting data. 4,630 votes were cast for Mac McClung, James Wiseman received 6,249, Bol Bol got 9,816, and Bronny “G-League” James finished with 141,519. The people do not take this seriously, and we shouldn’t either.
The All-Star game may have been a serious event at one point, but the game has been a joke for close to two decades, which is fine. When something becomes a joke, the best thing to do is get in on it, not try to out-serious it. The NBA needs to get rid of the curmudgeonly players, coaches, and media, and give All-Star weekend back to the fans. The game is for the people, and it should be by the people. If you don’t want to watch it, that’s fine, and you weren’t going to anyway. Let the All-Star game be the stupid, wild, silly, childish exhibition it is, instead of trying to make it into some weird statement on the sanctity of the game.
For any inquiries about work, discussion, and the like you can email me at nevin.l.brown@gmail.com.