To Be or Not to Be?: NBA Fan voting is not influential enough to prevent the appearance of deserving players
Alex Caruso has gained a cult-like following from Lakers and NBA fans. Called the “Bald Eagle,” Caruso is known for his unsuspecting athleticism and his ability to generate more Instagram highlights than points on any given night. While Lakers fans argue that he is the perfect role player next to superstars like LeBron James and Anthony Davis, a glance at his stats reveals that he is a below-average player. Averaging 5.5 PPG, 2.3 APG, and 2.6 RPG, Caruso is far from being a star. Yet, NBA fans around the world seem to think that he is; the final fan vote count for the 2021 All-Star game ranks Caruso eighth among the Western Conference backcourt, with 371,648 fan votes. According to fans, Caruso is more deserving of an All-Star appearance than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who averages 23.6 PPG, 6.3 APG, and 5.3 RPG, and shoots over 50% from the field. Despite these inconsistencies, the NBA should not remove All-Star voting, as the best players in the league are guaranteed their spots in the game every year regardless of the contradictions seen in the bottom few votes of each conference.
The NBA All-Star Game, which was first played in 1951, is an annual event where the league's 24 best stars face off against each other. All-Stars are selected through a combination of fan, player, coach, and media voting. The fan vote makes up 50% of the final vote that determines what players will start in the All-Star Game. The other 50% is split up among current player and media votes. These votes are reported through a ranking system, in which the top ten frontcourt and backcourt players in each conference are displayed by the league. The remaining 12 reserves are then voted on by coaches directly. Every year, the starters are generally considered to be the best players in the league, and never has the fan vote been influential enough to allow Caruso-caliber players to start in the All-Star game. For example, this year, Lebron, who is widely considered to be one of the greatest NBA players ever, was voted as a starter, which marks his 17th selection for the event. LeBron received his deserving spot as a starter as he is still one of the best players in the league.
The closest an undeserving player has ever come to being selected as a starter was in 2016 when center Zaza Pachulia finished fourth in western frontcourt fan voting. Zaza was averaging 8.6 PPG and 9.4 RPG, a statline that is far from those of All-Star caliber centers. Players and media made sure that he didn’t get selected, and Zaza missed being a starter by 15,000 votes and wasn’t voted in as a reserve either. Zaza Pachulia almost crashed the All-Star Game, but even he couldn't succeed despite his popularity and fame among fans.
Deserving players are selected to be starters for the All-Star Game, and fan voting is not influential enough to prevent this. Moreover, because coaches are the only ones selecting reserves, the likelihood of players like Alex Caruso and Zaza Pachulia making the game at all are virtually zero. Besides the occasional egregious and surprising appearance in the fan votes chart, fan voting is relatively harmless and doesn’t result in average or below-average players participating in the game All-Star Game.
