The NBA made a fairly drastic change to All-Star voting this season. Instead of the usual fan vote, the league decided to give media members and players a voice in who would be starters for the annual exhibition as well.
The first year of this experiment went about as well as expected. The league managed to stop someone like Zaza Pachulia from starting just because of massive fan support. But it also led to many questionable decisions from players and media as well as many of those entities not taking the idea completely seriously.
The players were especially egregious in that regard and Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr spoke about that recently (via Anthony Slater of the Mercury News):
“I am very disappointed in the players,” Kerr said. “They asked for the vote and a lot of them just made a mockery of it…I saw the list. I saw all the guys who got votes. Were you allowed to vote for yourself? I don’t know. Were guys voting for themselves? There were 50 guys on there that had no business getting votes. But a lot of guys wrote in their buddies for the presidential campaign. So maybe that was their own way of making a statement. But I think if you give the players a vote, they should take it serious.”
To see what Kerr is talking about, you can look at the results of the player vote (with about a 75% response rate) here.
Steve Kerr definitely has a point here. Players have complained (and rightfully so) about the fans doing a poor job of voting but they didn’t exactly set the bar high themselves. Personally, I think the fan vote is fine; it’s an exhibition game meant for entertainment. If that means that Zaza starts, then so be it.
