Psychoanalyzing the NBA All-Star Voting

The NBA All-Star Starters were announced last week for the upcoming second weekend in February.

The NHL had success with the Four Nations Face Off, so, with Adam Silver running out of ideas for the players to care about this weekend and not complain at all, we’ve also shifted to nationalism, and it’s now USA vs World since we can change the format every year!

The starters still had to come from the East and the West, and voting results have historically been a sham because they are a combination of fan popularity (who have twice the voting power) and bias from the players and media.

While the starters usually pan out to be the best representation of each conference, the results almost always involve non-basketball-related entities. Jayson Tatum, who has not played a single game this year, received a vote, probably because he has a little respect from someone who wants to give an underrated superstar some credit!

There was also the infamous year when Andrew Wiggins became an All-Star starter in 2022 because a K-Pop star campaigned for him, and they spammed the vote! There are higher powers at work.

With the full voting results released and rankings revealed for both how the fans and players voted in each conference, let’s take a look at a few of them and try to psychoanalyze why the fans and players both feel that way about an interesting cast of characters.

Tyrese Maxey // Starter; 2nd in fan, 5th in player

Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

There is an easy explanation for this one: the die-hard Philadelphians have a joyous rising star player, not the miserable, unavailable, stale, and gross-tasting combo of Joel Embiid and Paul George. The fans showed up to vote for Maxey, who plays with the speed and agility of someone that’s like Dash from The Incredibles, learning the extent of his powers since everyone else has traditionally been either old or injured in Philly, who has a front office that just tries to win now.

Maxey is 25, homegrown, and has organically become starter-worthy, routinely averaging 30 points per game, but the bliss Philly fans feel watching him play fast-paced, exciting basketball is why he finished 2nd in the fan vote.

He’s also a delight for the non-Philly fans, too. This is a guy who ran the agility course at the national dog show this year and is a former “sportsmanship award” winner.

Maxey is a treasure.

Brandon Ingram // 10th; 8th in player, 10th in fan

Brandon Ingram going from forgotten Lakers castaway to finishing top-10 overall in the East with a game centered on a lanky midrange game shows the leap he and Barnes have taken this year in Toronto. This team had play-in expectations at best in the preseason. It feels like with BI getting 8th in the player’s, a lot of it may have to do with the old school “Ingram plays the game the right way!” paradox because he hits the pull-up mid-range jumper above a 50% clip and that’s old school, difficult, and becoming obsolete in the era of math ball dunks, free throws, and three’s.

Top 10 in the fan, he does get the “I have an entire country behind me” bump from Canada, but there are also countless photos and clips of him and his rapper girlfriend GloRilla when she sits courtside at his games, where the GloRilla Fans (do they have a nickname?) vote for him.

LaMelo Ball // 16th; 21st in player, 13th in fan

This one is particularly interesting because of the discrepancy between player voting and fan voting. Lamelo has been in the top 15 in jersey sales every single season since 2021 and is a viral sensation off the court. He is THE Gen Z player. He has the outrageous-colored signature shoes with Puma instead of clean-cut Nikes, his brother is a rap star, he’s associated with the 6-7 meme, and he plays basketball like a kid that doesn’t know what organized basketball does when playing pickup at their rec center by taking the swaggiest-looking shot possible to impress the courtside supermodels like you’re playing 2K on Rookie mode.

And sometimes it works for him to his credit! The talent is there, and he can be one of the most exciting players on the offensive end on a good night! 

From the player’s perspective, it feels like unserious basketball. The Hornets have only ever made the play-in in his tenure; he’s never played more than 47 games, and the hero ball style is just unfun to play with. He’s only 24, but it kind of just feels like the old guard saying he needs to step up now that the core with him, Brandon Miller, and Kon Kneuppel could be legitimately dangerous for years down the line.

Devin Booker // 12th; 9th in player, 16th in fan

Booker might be on the opposite end, where his game and scoring in Phoenix, from the early days of his moribund tanking teams through making the Finals, are highly respected by his peers. Steve Kerr, who hates everyone not on the successful Warriors core, called him the “unsung MVP” of the Olympic Roster, and his performance is much more rooted in quiet consistency.

Is it small market syndrome? Is it because the fans thought he was a good stats, bad team guy before Phoenix got Chris Paul and Kevin Durant, and that’s still the case? Is it that he’s been on and off with a Kardashian?

Jamal Murray // 11th; 11th in player, 14th in fan

This is it. This is the legacy vote. The stat that everyone loves to give you is that Nikola Jokic has never played with an All-Star his entire career. It’s been largely due to a combination of things for Jamal Murray, who plays like an All-Star when healthy, which is that he’s either been injured, recovering from injury, or just plain not as good as, oh, Stephen Curry and Luka Doncic in the West.

He’s averaged 26 points per game and been a large reason why Denver hasn’t missed a beat since Jokic has been out for weeks with an injury, and the conversation surrounding him has always been the “Jamal Murray, never been an All-Star! It’s a shame!” discussion. It’s like when Chris Collinsworth would only bring up that Russell Wilson had never gotten an MVP vote during the height of the Legion of Boom Era Seahawks. 11th in player means they’re respecting his consistency and saying, “let’s get our guy there.”

Jimmy Butler III // 25th; 32nd in player, 19th in fan

Now, the voting results came in after Butler suffered the devastation of a torn ACL, but it’s particularly funny in that the fans just don’t seem to care that he has been moved around from team-to-team because he’s been a junkyard dog that doesn’t like to play with anyone who has any shrivel on unseriousness about him, as seen by when he bullied members of the Timberwolves to get to Philly, or when he bullied Sixers to get to the Heat, or bullied the coach and the players on the Heat to get to the Warriors. He has the persona of “playoff Jimmy” because he may waltz through the long regular season, but he almost single-handedly took the Heat to Finals glory at one point. Disrespecting the day-to-day grind might rub some guys the wrong way. 

The fans, however, would die for this guy. He sings in commercials. He’s got the Emo following from being in a Fall Out Boy video. He has a brand of intensity that is the stuff of WWE heels. 

Jimmy would love to be out there and available, but if only to take a rest day during his All-Star selection to hibernate until his inevitable playoff persona.