Everyone knows that through fan voting, the NBA All-Star game is really more of a popularity contest than it is about seeing the best in the game; and this year the two just happen to coincide. We don’t know who will make up the final teams for either conference yet, but we do know who the front-runners are.

The current poll results were announced by the NBA on Thursday of last week and according to that, Dwight Howard has received 1.16 million votes to take the spot of the starting center for the Eastern conference; that’s more votes than any other player in the league has received for any position during voting so far. As for whom he’ll play with, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony will most likely take the spots of starting forwards, with 970,000 and 780,000 votes respectively.

It’s the guard position that’s got all the votes in the West, and Bryant’s name is at the top of the list. While Byrant did receive over 1 million votes, he was still short of Howard’s numbers by about 50,000 votes. Other top contenders for the spot were Chris Paul (835,000 votes) and Ricky Rubio (600,000 votes.) As for whom Howard will most likely face at tip-off time? That will probably be Andrew Bynum, who’s currently ahead of his stiffest competition, DeAndre Jordan, by about 500,000 votes. Kevin Durant will also likely represent the West as the starting forward, with just about 1 million votes so far; Dirk Nowitzki and Blake Griffin are both his biggest competition, with the latter being ahead in the voting by about 260,000.

Of course looking at the numbers right now only gives us a good guess at who the teams will be. But with the starting lineup being solely based on these votes, a look at the numbers may be all we need. As for the reserve teams? Those will be decided by the coaches of the teams, which will be the coach of the team in each conference that holds the best record of the season as of January 31.

The announcement of who the coaches will be should come shortly after January 31, as it only takes a peek at the stats to find out. Meanwhile, the starting lineups for both teams will be announced on February 2, with the complete lineups being released on February 9.

Voting hasn’t been closed just yet and those who want to do so have until January 31 to get their say in. Those who want to place their vote need to visit the NBA website here, sign up to become an NBA All-Access member and then place their vote. With the game coming up on February 26, it’s a great way to get in on the action!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 12:37 pm and is filed under NBA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.