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For the 17th time in his 18-year career, LeBron James has been named the NBA All-Star, the league announced on TNT’s pregame show Thursday. The Los Angeles Lakers forward may not even have wanted the game to happen, but he still received the most votes from fans of any player in the league (5,922,554 votes), and thus will be team captain for the game for the fourth year in a row (every year the NBA has used the captains format).
Kevin Durant (5,567,106) received the most votes in the East and will elect the opposing team.
James is a well-deserved All-Star starter after averaging 25.7 points, 8.2 rebounds and 7.9 assists so far this season, and given his enduring popularity, this isn’t a surprising development. However, it remains to be seen if any of his teammates will join him in the pandemic exhibition game.
Alex Caruso, as expected, did not garner enough general support to be named an All-Star Game, despite strong fan voting totals. But most notably, Anthony Davis also didn’t get enough votes from fans (50% of the vote), players (25%) and the media (25%) to be named a starter, and now it remains to be seen if he gets named as a reserve by the vote of the coaches.
Of course, it is highly unlikely that Davis will play in the game either way, as the Lakers have said he will likely be out until at least the end of the All-Star break with his Achilles injury aggravated. But these things are still important for resume and legacy purposes, so it will be worth a look to see if Davis is named as a reserve. Even in the midst of a somewhat low year by his standards, he is still an All-Star worthy for his two-way impact. Whether or not it will be revealed in the coming weeks.
The league announced other key details about the All-Star Game in a press release early Thursday:
The National Basketball Association (NBA) announced today that NBA All-Star 2021 will take place on Sunday, March 7 at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, home of the Atlanta Hawks, where the league’s annual worldwide celebration of the game will take place. the one night for the first time, with action on the court starting at 6:30 pm ET on TNT. As part of this year’s events, the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) announced that they will allocate more than $ 2.5 million in funding and resources to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and support and awareness on equity and access to COVID-19 care, relief and vaccines.
TNT’s NBA All-Star coverage will begin at 5 p.m. ET with TNT NBA Tip-Off presented by CarMax, followed by the Taco Bell® Skills Challenge and the MTN DEW® 3-Point Contest starting at 6:30 pm ET. Coverage of the 70th NBA All-Star Game will begin at 8 pm ET, with the AT&T Slam Dunk at halftime. The game will follow the same format as last year, with the teams competing to win each quarter and playing to a final score during the untimed fourth quarter.
Rosters for the NBA All-Star Game will be determined through the NBA All-Star Draft, where the two team captains will select from the pool of players voted as starters and reserves at each conference and make their selections regardless of conference affiliation. . The captains will be the All-Star starter for each conference that receives the most votes from the fans at their conference.
The NBA will once again honor the late Kobe Bryant at the All-Star Game on March 7 by incorporating 24 points into the final score calculation. The same format was used in 2020.
– Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) February 18, 2021
Given that players still seem opposed to “the largely unpopular plans for an All-Star Game,” we’ll see if any of this really ends up happening, but James will go down as a 2021 All-Star in the history books either way. . We’ll see soon if Davis will too.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast at iTunes, Spotify, Stapler or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.
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