Reading haterade tea leaves and predicting All-Star starters

Will haters cost Trae Young and Anthony Davis starting bids? Can Anthony Edwards help Shai Gilgeous-Alexander pass Stephen Curry?

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

---

Four Breton Women; Paul Gaugin; 1886

Voting for NBA All-Star starters ends on Saturday. The league has released the latest fan results; the fan vote counts for 50% of the starter determination, with the media vote taking 25% and the player vote taking another 25%. We won’t know the media or player vote until the announcement on Thursday. But based on what we’re seeing from fans and what we’ve seen from media and players in the past, we have a strong idea who’s going to start this year.

Let’s start with the West. LeBron James, Nikola Jokic and Kevin Durant are dominating the fan vote in the frontcourt and will finish 1-2-3 in that order. The media will certainly have Jokic No. 1, and he finished No. 1 in the player vote last season. He’s definitely starting. LeBron finished No. 2 in the media and player vote last year, and should be in that zone again this season. He’ll be starting.

By virtue of finishing third in the fan vote, Durant’s at a little risk of slipping behind Anthony Davis overall if players and the media rate AD much higher than KD. But it requires Durant to slip pretty far or Davis to rate higher than LeBron. For example, if both the media and players rate AD No. 2 behind Jokic with LeBron at No. 3, and then slot KD at No. 4, Davis (weighted score of 3) would be a starter over Durant (weighted score of 3.5). If media puts AD No. 2 and players put him No. 3, and KD is No. 4 in both categories, Davis (3.25) would still climb above Durant (3.5). Only if both players and media put LeBron over Davis does Durant hold on by virtue of a tie, which goes to the fan vote winner.

All that said, Durant is very narrowly behind Jokic for No. 2 in the fan vote. If he passes Joker at the last moment, Davis’ path narrows. No one else is really in the mix. You can’t finish lower than No. 4 in the fan vote and have a realistic path to start unless there’s a starter who simply isn’t going to rate at all with players or media. And this is where I should also note that the players have been more skeptical of Davis than even the media in the past, and both have rated him well below fans. (The Lakers bump.)