It looks as if Dwyane Wade is going to his 12th consecutive NBA All-Star Game, and he’s going as a starter.
While Wade was caught from behind late in last year’s voting season, he’s created a pretty remarkable gap between himself and the rest of the guards in the Eastern Conference as of the second voting update, which the NBA provided on Thursday. Wade tops all East guards with 562,558 votes, more than double the No. 2 vote-getter, Kyrie Irving. This, despite Wade having a good-not-great start to the season at age 33 and Irving having played all of 170 minutes.
Presenting the second returns of #NBAAllStarTO Voting presented by @Verizon! https://t.co/7SYpaqHa1f pic.twitter.com/7gIH3FhpZU
— 2016 NBA All-Star (@NBAAllStar) January 7, 2016
Ranking third, still, is Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry, perhaps the best point guard in the conference so far this season. Lowry has 242,276 votes, 28,818 fewer than Irving and 21,847 more than fourth-place Jimmy Butler. John Wall is in fifth and DeMar DeRozan in sixth, with all six (and even Derrick Rose) having a legitimate shot at the second starting spot with a strong final-week push.
Lowry trailed until late last year, too, before usurping Wade for a starting spot. He’s lost a bit of ground on Irving in terms of total votes but he’s well within striking distance, perhaps a Drake or Justin Bieber tweet away from getting the nudge he needs. And he probably deserves it. He’s averaging 20.6 points, 4.9 rebounds, 6.5 assists, and 2.2 steals for a 22-15 team while shooting 37.4 percent from long-range and posting a career-best PER, a near-career-best true-shooting percentage, and grading out well in advanced metrics across the board (he’s sixth in the NBA in Real Plus-MInus, for example, second among East players and first among East guards by a wide margin). He’s been very good.
DeRozan is a deserving All-Star as well, though I’d probably rank Butler as the top two-guard in the East so far this year. DeRozan’s been on another level offensively since late November and nearly won Player of the Month for December, and on the whole, it’s been the best season of his career. I’d probably have him fourth among East guards behind Butler, Lowry, and Wall, because defense matters, too, at least as a tie-breaker in All-Star scenarios. To be clear, DeRozan has been awesome – 22.6 points, 4.2 rebounds, 4.1 assists and career- or near-career-best effieincy metrics – and it’d be a shame if he didn’t get the second nod of his career.
I’m not of the mind, by the way, that fans should vote for one or the other. I thought that made sense early on if fans were only going to vote for one Raptors player, but now every vote for DeRozan siphons one from Wade or Irving. Just make sure if you want one Raptor in the starting lineup, Lowry’s getting a vote.
Voting is open for 11 more days, so be sure to hammer Lowry’s name with #NBAVote if you want to see him get the starting nod. Here’s how, as a reminder:
The league has released information on all of the different ways to vote this year, and with so many platforms, it seems we’re only a year or two away from telepathic voting. This year, fans can vote online at NBA.com, via text message, Facebook, Instagram, Weibo, Tencent, and the NBA app. And, of course, fans can vote on Twitter. Last year they had fans use the hashtag #NBABallot, but this year they’re going with the more character limit-friendly #NBAVote.
Personally, I’ve already kind of grown a bit tired of the voting game, but that might just be me. The reality is that the fans will vote for who they’re going to vote for, it’s not a huge deal either way, and even Lowry said he doesn’t really care because it’s for the fans. Sure, Wade and particularly Irving getting “undeserved” nods might bump DeRozan from his second All-Star appearance, and that would be a shame. But he may still get in, and Lowry bumping Irving could lead to a scenario where two Raptors represent the team with the game in the city. That would be awesome, I’m just not willing to get too upset about it here, 11 days out. Shocking to those who read here regularly, I’m sure.
Anyway, get out there and hashtag. Vote or die.
Fun aside: I did a Twitter audit of our account. We have sent 27 tweets containing “Kyle Lowry” and “#NBAVote,” good for 2,660 RTs. We’ve sent 22 containing “DeMar DeRozan” and “#NBAVote,” good for 2,166 RTs. So we’ve been responsible for 1.11 percent of Lowry’s votes and 1.28 percent of DeRozan’s.
