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The 2020 NBA All-Star Game, the playground battle of the 24 best players in the world, will be held in Chicago on February 16th. We are a week away from the national reveal of which players were voted to start the game. The fans, the media, and the players all have a say in who will be selected. The fan vote is worth 50 percent while the media and players are 25 percent each.
Traditionally, the all-star game is a matchup between the Eastern and Western conferences for bragging rights and claims to the superior conference. Since the first All-Star game in 1951, the East holds a 38-29 advantage over the West in these games. In 2018 The NBA decided to put tradition on hold and change the format of the game. Now the leading vote-getters from each conference will be the captains and create their own team out of the pool of 24 players, 12 from each conference. Lebron James and Stephen Curry were the captains in 2018. Lebron and Giannis Antetokounmpo were the captains in 2019.
Russell Westbrook #0 of the Oklahoma City Thunder Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
This year seems to be a repeat of last year with Lebron and Giannis as the top two vote-getters. With a week to go, Lebron has the most votes with 4,747,887 votes. Giannis has 4,474,107 votes. If Luka Doncic were in the East, he would be in line to be the captain with 4,598,323 votes but he doesn’t. Rounding out the top 5 vote-getters is Anthony Davis with 4,412,619 votes and Kawhi Leonard with 2,973,076.
Another caveat is that the captains have to choose the starters for their team out of the remaining eight leading vote-getters for guards and forwards. As of right now, Giannis and Lebron would have to make the best starting five out of Trae Young, Kyrie Irving, Luka Doncic, James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid, and Pascal Siakam.
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Considering that these numbers are just the votes tallied by the fans and have not yet taken into account the votes from the media and players, the pool of players previously mentioned could look very different when the starters are announced next week. Specifically on the Eastern Conference side where Kyrie Irving is ranked second for the East guards but has missed a significant portion of time with a shoulder injury.
Regardless of who starts, the game between the 24 best players in the world currently should be nothing short of entertaining and competitive
