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NBA players: they're just like us (in that they too are bad at voting for All-Stars)

Dan Devine
Senior NBA writer
Lou Williams laughs and shrugs after learning that ballot was, like, for real. (AP)
Lou Williams laughs and shrugs after learning that ballot was, like, for real. (AP)

Over the years, a number of NBA players have been loud and clear in expressing their belief that media members shouldn’t really be tasked with voting for stuff like year-end awards and All-NBA teams, because they don’t think we know much about, well, anything. And when the NBA decided to switch up the All-Star voting system this year, halving fans’ influence in selecting All-Star starters and instituting both player and media balloting with each accounting for one-quarter of the final tally, some players, like the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Kyrie Irving, reiterated their opposition to media voting.

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“It is what it is, honestly,” Irving told reporters. “I guess they’re trying to fix the deserving factor, maybe. Leaving it up to the players, that’s good, as well. Leaving it up to the fans, that’s good, as well. But the other 25 percent, I think they need to throw out.”

And that was fine! The point is end up with either the players most deserving of recognition halfway through the season, the players who will provide the most entertainment for the fans or, ideally, both. If the players can do a better job of getting us there, then hey, why not, right?

In practice, though, the players’ first trip to the polls suggested that they’re about as bad at voting for the best and brightest as the rest of us.

Among the eye-popping votes cast by the 324 players who submitted ballots — and, again, remember this was to pick who should start the All-Star Game, not just appear in it:

• Players who haven’t played a single game this season, whether due to injury or being buried on their team’s bench, like Mo Williams, Ben Simmons, Khris Middleton, Brice Johnson and Quincy Pondexter;

• Players who have logged fewer than 100 total NBA minutes this season, like Michael Gbinije, Georgios Papagiannis, Bryn Forbes, Daniel Ochefu, Pierre Jackson, Rakeem Christmas, Thon Maker, Marshall Plumlee, Daniel Ochefu, Adreian Payne, Mike Miller, John Lucas III and Quincy Acy; and

• Players who have gotten more significant spin, but who, um, don’t exactly fit the All-Star mold, like, Ben McLemore, Isaiah Whitehead, Jerian Grant, Jordan McRae, Jarell Martin, Alan Anderson, Matthew Dellavedova, Tomas Satoransky, Cameron Payne and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot.

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There were lots of people who chose not to vote for very productive MVPs:

… and lots of people who got only one vote, leading some to wonder just how many took full advantage of the right to vote for themselves:

… or, as SB Nation’s Tom Ziller suggests, maybe just for one another:

I actually don’t think most of those players who have one vote actually voted for themselves. I think teammates and friends are making joke votes. In fact, I’m guessing that either a majority of players included at least one joke vote on their ballot or like a third of the ballots were total joke ballots. Odds are some guys decided to just vote for their team’s starting five, or their team’s bench mob, or their team’s rookies and fringe players, or guys that went to the same college or are from the same part of the country.

Whichever explanation you favor, we seem to be quite a ways away from players bringing the full mastery of their profession to bear on the ballot, as Sports Illustrated’s Ben Golliver notes:

NBA players cast at least one vote for 283 different players. Remember, they’re voting for All-Star starters, the five most deserving players from each conference. So that’s 283 candidates for 10 spots. From that group, 98 different players received one and only one vote.

By contrast, the media panel voted for a much more reasonable total of 32 candidates. Even the least deserving nominees from the media pool—guys like Dwyane Wade, Hassan Whiteside and DeAndre Jordan—are at least somewhat justifiable. While the players collectively cast hundreds of junk votes for more than 100 unworthy candidates, the media panel cast zero junk votes and nominated no more than three or four questionable candidates.

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst speculates that such “junk” votes might have been the result of players “mocking the process” and submitting joke ballots “just like fans.” Which, we’re sure, is exactly how Commissioner Adam Silver imagined it.

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And here’s the kicker: in the final analysis, the five starters most commonly picked for each conference by media and players barely diverged at all. Media members had LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jimmy Butler, Isaiah Thomas and DeMar DeRozan in the East; the player ballot swapped in Irving for DeRozan, but was otherwise the same. There wasn’t even that level of disagreement in the West, as media and players alike chose Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook and James Harden.

The results have led many to suggest further changes to the voting system. Golliver, for example, advocates eliminating the player vote and using the media ballot as a 50 percent check against fan voting that would’ve installed Zaza Pachulia as a Western starter at the expense of Davis, while Ziller recommends giving players “a pre-set selection of options without a write-in option,” which would be “broad enough to not snub any reasonable candidates, but prevent all these useless votes.” Personally, I’d lean toward the latter, if only to avoid further media/player beefing over the franchise and putting fans who love the game and media who cover it in direct conflict. Either suggestion, though, is probably better than continuing to act as if casting a vote for a player who’s yet to set foot on the floor this season is worth a second of anyone’s time.

Whether the NBA feels compelled to continue tweaking the system after just one year of election returns remains to be seen. If nothing else, though, at least the maiden voyage of the new voting framework has proven the other point that Irving made as he was decrying the media vote.

“Everyone is going to be biased anyway, so it’s cool,” he said.

I don’t know about you guys, but I can feel my faith in democracy growing stronger by the second!

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!