The NBA announced on Thursday that it would be introducing Amazon Alexa to the voting process for the 2018 NBA All-Star game in Los Angeles. According to the NBA, early voting will be available on December 21 on the NBA app and NBA.com while voting on various other platforms will open Christmas Day, December 25.
A new addition the league is adding to the All-Star voting process is the new “2-for- dates.”
The 2-for-1’s “will allow fans to have their votes count twice on Dec. 31, Jan. 4, Jan. 11, Jan. 12 and Jan. 15 when voting through the NBA App and NBA.com, the NBA said. “All ‘2-for-1 Days’ will be designated 12 a.m. – 11:59 p.m. ET,” the NBA explained in a press release.
Voting will also be available to fans in China as well.
The starters for the All-Star game will be announced on TNT’s Inside the NBA on January 8. The reserves will get the same treatment two weeks later, January 23. On January 25 Inside the NBA will reveal the rosters for the game.
The NBA shared this year’s new approach to the game’s team structure by introducing team captains.
Under a new All-Star Game format that replaces the traditional matchup between the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference, the team rosters will be chosen by two captains from the pool of players voted as starters and reserves. The captains, who will select the teams before TNT televises the results, will be the All-Star starter from each conference who receives the most fan votes in his conference.
Just as like last year, both fans and media can vote for the All-stars. The NBA will give updates on the fan vote twice in January. Voting will end on Monday, January 15.
