 What's the word, y'all? The first round of NBA All-Star voting came out yesterday and I realized that I was part of the problem. So here they are. We got LeBron, James, and Kevin Durant leading their respective conferences and total votes, which is cool, because last time we got them as NBA captains of the All-Star game. We got some very, very good memes. And of course it was in the midst of the James Arton trade, so that kind of carried it. But still, both of those guys know how to play to a camera. Those are two really good captains. I remember once upon a time, LeBron James was known as being undefeated in the All-Star game when he was the captain drafted. I don't know if that still ranks true today, but if it does, here's another opportunity, LeBron. But there are some very noticeable things when I look at this, like Kevan Looney being top 10. Shout out to Loon. Also, you got Paolo and Nicholas Claxton. They're gross. All-Star Reeves and Jordan Poole. And the reason I'm pointing them out is because they have big fan bases and they really shouldn't have this many votes compared to some of the people that are snubbed. So when I say I'm part of the problem, I am part of the reason why Dematica Bonus is not even ranking top 10 amongst front-court players because I personally have never put together a real-life ballot. This is the first I've ever went tweeting NBA All-Star Kenny Beachham and 500 people re-tweeting it and 5,000 people liking it. Shout out to y'all. Y'all are crazy. But this is the first I've ever been when I was on Cloud9 as a Bulls fan, putting Zach Levine, DeMar DeRose and Zach Levine, Fred Van Vliet, and Zach Levine again. Yeah, those are good times where everything was great and we were towards the top of the conference. Man, what I would give to go back to those times. But this season, the NBA decided, forget the Twitter thing. We've seen enough and part of it might be because of BamBam's tweet last year. So last year, of course, BamBam tweeted this and BamBam is one of the biggest K-pop stars in the world. I mean, we're talking 11 and a half million followers. This tweet goes out there. It gets almost 40,000 re-tweets, 70,000 likes and then also get the army to go ahead and tweet Andrew Wiggins, NBA All-Star. And in the moment, I was like, man, Wiggins don't deserve to be there. But when you look at the options outside of him, considering how many injuries there were and how good he was performing, he deserved to be that shout to Wiggs and he was the second best player on the NBA championship team, shout to Wiggs. But the NBA decided, I'm not saying specifically because it is, the NBA decided this season, no more tweeting. If you want to put together a ballot or you want to vote for anybody, you got to put out a full 10, you got to go to NBA.com or you got to use your app. Which is just a lot of work. So I haven't put together the ballot, but today that changes. And it's understandable that DeMonte Sabonis is not top 10, even though he's playing like it. He should undoubtedly be an All-Star, but he's playing in a market like Sacramento that if you're not an NBA sicko or NBA super fan, you probably overlooking exactly what the Kings are doing slash what DeMonte Sabonis is doing. Especially if you go to the official app and you're just putting together your voting, you're not going to see DeMonte Sabonis for some time. You got to really go down. You see the Air Fox, who also should be getting a lot of votes, but you got to go down for some time. Even if I go filter and say Western Conference front court, he's on the third row behind some people that you're used to voting for. Shout to Larry. Come on, man. I got a lot of love for you to put up 49 last night. That's just put him in the game. But like you're undoubtedly going to vote for these four people, they're up top, they're having good seasons and they're notable names. And a guy like DeMonte Sabonis, even when he was an All-Star in Indiana, was kind of like an afterthought. He was like the last man in the game. Today voting counts times three. So I'm putting together a ballot that we'll see some of my favorite lowly ranked slash snub players. But then again, we're only voting for starters. And if we're thinking about the starters in the Western Conference, but then again, my little vote for DeMonte Sabonis is not about to get him into an All-Star start spot, which is what we're voting on the end of the day. We're only voting for the top 10. The rest is voted by the coaches. And I think because of that, Sabonis gets in, but we're only voting for the starters. And then based on what I see right now, out West guarantees starter lock based on the fan voting, which is 50%, 25% is the players and 25% is the media. LeBron has the fan voting. He's gonna have the player voting and he's gonna have the media voting. LeBron James is an absolute lock to be a starter, obviously. Jokic, also absolute lock to be a starter because he's got the fan voting here. Because he's gonna have the media, he might be number one on media and he'll also have the respect of his peers at least enough to be a starter lock. Steph Curry, Luca Doncic, also locks on both fronts. So we're looking for one, one front court player out West to take that spot. And right now it is Anthony Davis based on the fan voting, but Anthony Davis has only played 25 games. And I wonder how the media looks at that. Again, we don't know when he's coming back before the All-Star break. He should be back, hopefully. But we don't know how the media's gonna look at that. And we don't know how the players around him are gonna look at that, especially with Zion being right on his tail. And I was not honest, also out on injury, unfortunately. It's not been a great year for injury luck in the NBA. But I could see a world where Z takes the last starting spot in the front court if Anthony Davis is not playing and he doesn't have the respect of the others. Out East, I'm seeing Kevin Arendt and Yanis's absolute locks for the same reasons. And I honestly think an absolute lock for the back court is done too. I think Kyrie Irvin has the fans. He's 1,000% gonna have his peers voting. And the media might deduct him because of the stuff that happened earlier in the season. But I think because of the fans, 50% and the players are the 25%, 75% of the voters saying Kyrie Irvin is number one and number two. So he's gonna have a lock. And Don Vementru just had a 71 point game. He's absolutely a lock too. So I think there is one spot open out East between Jason Tatum and Joel and Bede. As right now, Joel and Bede has the fan voting by about 100,000, a little bit less than that. And if you look throughout the last previous seasons, Joel and Bede has handled Jason Tatum when it comes to the fan voting. Last year, Jared Allen had more votes than Jason Tatum and Miles Bridges had more votes than Jason Tatum. But things are different this season for Tatum because he's playing at an MVP caliber level and the Celsius are good. If you remember last year, the Celsius started off so bad and he was playing good, but when you start off slightly above 500, you're probably not gonna get a lot of the votes. And now things are different. So I wonder what the media and the players think of that last starting spot. So we're doing all of this voting and we're reacting to these things. When in reality, like eight out of the 10 spots are locked and guaranteed. So we just voted on the other stuff. We just looking at the fact that the Knicks only have Dare Grows and be like, what is New York doing? And honestly, the Dare Grows votes aren't just coming from Knicks fans. I know plenty of Bulls fans is putting Dare Grows in their ballot. I know Tim Bulls fans that have put Dare Grows in their ballot and then he's got the entire market overseas too. So that's why Dare Grows is top 10. But like Jalen Brunson, he might not make the actual game, but he's been playing all-star caliber and Julia's Randall's relationship with Knicks fans is kind of crazy. A couple of years ago, he was an all NBA and then a year after that, he's just in the crowd and yada, yada, yada. And this year, he's playing at an all-star caliber level. But the fact that he has less votes than Nicholas Claxton, who's just over the bridge of him, is insane to me. Nicholas Claxton's fan base, whether it be the Brooklyn Nets or just his individual stands, should be outweighed by Julia's Randall by a thousand, considering he's playing in the bigger, on the bigger team in the bigger market and he has been an all-star before. So it's insane to me that he hasn't even cracked top 10. Don't really matter because he's not gonna be looked at as a star anyway. So should it matter if he's top 10 or not? It doesn't, it really doesn't. Shout out to the Warriors fans. I mean, they do not play. Them boys do not play. They gonna vote they guys in. I'm surprised we didn't see Dante Devincenzo in the top 10. I wouldn't be surprised if he's number 12. I'll say that. I'll be surprised if Devincenzo's number 12 because they vote and they vote daily. What if he did he say, vote or die? Shout out to Diddy. If you wanna see your guy be a starter, you gotta vote or he not gonna get there. Leave a like or subscribe. You can do both. You can do both.