The first round of NBA All-Star fan voting feedback came out, summed up in 10 words:
The west rolls up into a dog, and the east sits casually.
Of course, this is an exaggeration, and the competition is still very fierce in both the East and the West. But relative to the east, the West is especially intense, and the root cause is that Durant and Irving have traveled westward, increasing the involution of the West.
The battle between James and the alphabet is still the same, last year's final vote king was James, and in the first round of vote counting this year, the first place was the alphabet.
Fan voting can be done every day, and there is a "triple day", so the changes will be very large, and the voting will last for a month, and it will be announced in four rounds.
In addition to the traditional pit position occupied by superstars, there are some new features this year. For example, there are four or five new generations of young stars in the West, and Haliburton takes the top spot in the Eastern Defender line, and the lead is quite large.
Below I have listed the numbers from the first round of fan voting last year, and we can see these patterns by comparing them with the numbers from the first round of feedback this year.
I marked the stars who rose in the first round of this year's votes with a red upward arrow and a green downward arrow on the contrary, so that we can see the difference between East and West.
In the Western Guard Line, there are many green downward arrows, and the head of the Western Forward Line, except for James, is declining; on the contrary, in the East, whether it is a guard or a forward, the head is an upward red arrow, and the overall red upward arrow is the majority.
Compared with the first round last year, we can find that there is less Durant in the Eastern Conference and Irving less in the Eastern Guard, and the two of them occupied the top spot of forward and guard respectively at that time. Last year, after all the fans shot, the forward line surpassed Durant, but the guard line was always dominated by Irving. Later, Durant defected to the Suns, Irving was traded to the Mavericks, and the first round of votes this year was returned, and the letters, Embiid and Tatum, who occupied the second to fourth positions at this time last year, were naturally in the top three this year.
The guard line is not like the forwards, everyone moves forward one position, but is directly killed by Haliburton to the top of the table, Lillard, who transferred from the West, occupies the second, and poor Trae Young finally struggles to move up two places, and is suddenly blocked out of the top two. According to the rules of the past, the starting line was all voted on by the fans, with three for forwards and two for defenders, and if the deadline was at this time, Trae Young would not be able to start.
Haliburton came out on top to finish first in the East, and his total votes were even equal to those of Luka and Curry in the West, which is also relatively rare in history. But given that he's the league's current assist leader and All-Star host, it doesn't seem surprising.
At this time last year, Eastern Conference defenders voted Haliburton eighth and players voted sixth, and the media liked him more and put him third, behind Mitchell and Jaylen Brown.
Last year's Eastern defender was the more prominent Mitchell, who was traded by the Jazz for Mitchell, who made the starting lineup by relying on the second vote of the fans, the second vote of the player and the first vote of the media. But this year, Mitchell entered a career plateau, and the Cavaliers' results were not outstanding, so the first-round feedback votes slipped to fourth in the Eastern Conference, followed by the 76ers, Knicks' popular Maxey and Bronson.
Haliburton averages 12.7 assists per game, and he's likely to dominate the league's assists charts for the next 10 years. In addition, he performed well in the mid-season tournament and reached the final. But I personally think that even if he is threatened by the rankings later, he will get a "leg on the arm" because this year's All-Star Game is being played in Indianapolis.
Fans vote for performance and popularity, with Durant's strength, whether in the East or the West, there will definitely be a place for him in the top three.
Poor Davis, even if he can still turn over the river and the sea now, he has no chance with the top three. At the end of last year, fans ranked him third in the Western Conference Forward, but the players didn't buy his performance, and ranked him seventh and the media ranked sixth, so he ended up in fourth place and simply didn't become an All-Star. There is a good chance that he will be selected by the coach this year.
There will not be much suspense in the five forwards and guards in the West this year, that is, James, Jokic, Durant, Luka and Curry, nothing more than players and media having some small influence on the rankings.
If there's anyone who could be a dark horse, it's the Thunder's SGA, who ranked him fourth in last year's Western Conference guard poll, both fans, media and players, behind Morant. Morant has slipped this year due to off-court incidents, and I believe that the players and media will give SGA a very high ranking, and it is unknown whether it will be enough to shake the position of Luka and Curry.
A group of young stars in the top 10 of Western Conference forwards and defenders is a standout phenomenon. On the forward line, the Rockets' Schengen, Spurs' Wemban, and the Thunder's Chet are all on the list. In addition to SGA and Morant, there are also Edwards and Fox on the guard line. This phenomenon in the western region shows that the replacement is imperceptibly changing.
Today's All-Star selection, with 50% of the fans' votes, 25% of the players, and 25% of the media, is theoretically more reasonable than in the past, but the calculation method is more complicated.
For example, last season's Curry, who had the first number of fan votes, counted as 1, and 0.5 points based on 50%, and the second most voted by players, counted as 2, and 0.5 points based on 25%, and the media votes were also 0.5 points, adding up to 1.5 points for the three items. The last one with the least score is ranked high. If the score is the same, the one with the most fan votes is ranked higher.
NBA All-Star voting began on December 19 last year, and until January 21 this year, Chinese fans can also vote through the NBA's mobile app, and according to the lineup generated by the vote, an acrylic ticket stub with the world's unique voting number will be generated, which fans can keep as a souvenir.
But then again, I've always had a different opinion about the rules for NBA All-Star voting: they still set the number of All-Stars in the front and back courts, with three forwards and two guards. Although it is an improvement over one center, two forwards, and two guards in the past, the position in the NBA has become quite blurred, and it is better to mix all the players together and not have a positional distinction.
That's where it's fun.