[ad_1]
LeBron James was selected to make his 20th consecutive NBA All-Star Game start, while hometown hero Tyrese Haliburton was chosen to make his first.
According to voting results posted on TNT Thursday night for the Feb. 18 NBA Classic, which will be held at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Haliburton will represent the Pacers on their home court as the East’s starting point guard . He will be joined by fellow Milwaukee guard Damian Lillard, Philadelphia center and current NBA MVP Joel Embiid, Milwaukee forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, the top overall fan voter, and Boston forward Jayson Tatum.
James will be joined in the West by Dallas guard Luka Dončić, Oklahoma City guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Denver center and reigning NBA Finals MVP Nikola Jokic and Phoenix forward Kevin Durant (13-time All-Star). -Star has not been healthy in February to play in the actual game since 2019.
James, 39, the Lakers’ star forward, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and the West’s voting leader, has started every All-Star Game since 2005 and broke free from his tie with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the previous All Games record. -Star selections.
Like Haliburton, this will be Gilgeous-Alexander’s first start and second All-Star appearance. Both Haliburton and James are sidelined by their respective teams with lingering leg injuries, but hopefully they’ll be healthy enough to take the court for the All-Star Game.
The fan vote represented 50 percent of the total to elect the starters; the player vote and the media vote accounted for 25 percent each, respectively. The seven reserves for each conference, to be announced on February 1, are selected by NBA head coaches.
There were really only two close calls, the second guard spot in each conference.
In the East, the Hawks’ Trae Young topped all other guards in the fan vote, while the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson was voted the starter by the media and the 76ers’ Tyrese Maxey was voted by the players. The highest Lillard finished on any ballot was third (fans) and he finished tied with Brunson in total points – he made his eighth All-Star Game in a tiebreaker (more fan votes than Brunson).
In the West, fans chose Warriors all-time great Stephen Curry over Gilgeous-Alexander, but the Canadian was the top vote-getter among media and players.
Curry is, as of now, a nine-time All-Star, and of the eight All-Star Games he has played in (he was injured last year), he started all eight. Entering Thursday, he was averaging 26.7 points and shooting 40.1 percent from 3-point range (he also leads the league with 172 3-pointers), but the Warriors are struggling mightily right now and the combination of stats and Gilgeous-Alexander and Dončić wins were too much for Curry to overcome.
The 73rd NBA All-Star Game returns to the old format (last seen at the 2017 All-Star Game in New Orleans) of players playing for the Eastern and Western conferences, rather than being drafted, a la a playground, for which whoever obtained the highest number of votes in each conference.
Additionally, the game will consist of four 12-minute quarters, like a normal game, instead of the “Elam” scoring model of a target score for each team in a fourth quarter with no time to determine the winner, which had been in effect since the 2020 game in Chicago.
Captains still exist, and are again based on vote totals in each conference, so James will be captain for the seventh time in his career, seventh consecutive year overall and sixth consecutive year outside the West. Antetokounmpo will be captain for the third time.
Additionally, in keeping with recent traditions, the team with the highest points in each quarter will win money for the charity of their captain’s choice.
Changes to the All-Star Game over the years were implemented to try to add a competitive edge and entertainment that the league (and fans and media) felt had been lost. After some initial success (the All-Star Games in 2020 and 2022 were better under the “Elam” scoring model), last year’s contest in Salt Lake City was such a failure that the league decided to revert to its old model. With one caveat.
Just play harder.
“All-Star weekend has become an incredible weekend, and it is,” NBA vice president Joe Dumars said in October. “But at the end of All-Star weekend, the game can’t be an afterthought where guys don’t play (hard). We talked to the players about how to put on a great show on the last night, Sunday night, and how to go out and compete.
Haliburton, currently out with a hamstring injury, has averaged 23.6 points and a league-high 12.6 assists in 34 games this season. Last month, Haliburton became the third player in NBA history to record consecutive 20-point, 20-assist games, joining Hall of Famers Magic Johnson and John Stockton.
“When you’re 23, 24 years old, you want to keep pushing yourself to higher levels, keep pushing yourself to higher levels of play on the court,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said of Haliburton, who is 23 and played for USA. Basketball last time. summer. “Those things lead to high awards and stature, but he never stops. You can never exhale with things like this. …You can’t look at it that way, and I don’t see Tyrese looking at it that way. I think he has much more important things to do as far as his commitment to the organization, the city and him wanting to be a part of this team’s success.”
James, out with an ankle injury, is breaking “oldest player in history” records left and right. Currently, he averages 24.8 points per game, which if maintained would be his lowest scoring average since his rookie year. But James, who turned 39 in December, is still averaging 7.4 assists and 7.2 rebounds. He is second on the Lakers in scoring behind Anthony Davis, who is enjoying an excellent individual campaign (25.1 points per game, 12.2 rebounds per game) and is a virtual lock to be selected as an All-Star reserve. .
Embiid leads the NBA in scoring, with a ridiculous 36.1 points per game, followed by Dončić (33.6 points per game), Antetokounmpo (31.3 points per game) and Gilgeous-Alexander (31.1 points per game). game). Gilgeous-Alexander leads the league with 32 games of 30 or more points.
Embiid has been an All-Star seven times. Jokic has done it six times and Dončić and Tatum are now five-time All-Stars.
Required reading
(Photo: Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)