We’ve officially reached the halfway point of the 2024-25 NBA season, and you know what that means: All-Star Weekend is coming. We’re still a few weeks away from the league’s pilgrimage to San Francisco, but for now, we still have to pick teams — and the first 10 players were revealed Thursday night.
Lakers star LeBron James became the NBA’s all-time record holder for All-Star appearances last season with 20, and now the 40-year-old has extended that number to 21 by being again named incumbent in the West. In the East, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Bucks led all players in fan voting and was selected alongside two members of the New York Knicks, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, among the starters.
Starters are chosen through a combination of fan voting (50% of the formula), player voting (25%) and media voting (25%). Fan voting numbers have been available throughout the process, but now that we know where the players and media landed, we know who our five starters from each conference will be.
Below are the Eastern Conference starters.
And here are the Western Conference starters.
As a reminder, this year’s format will be slightly different.
For most of the NBA’s history, the All-Star Game was divided between conferences. The best players from the East faced the best players from the West. Recently, the league experimented with drafting players against each other to build their rosters, and when that failed, they returned to conferences last season. Today, they have completely abandoned the concept of two teams. This year’s All-Star “game” will feature four teams: three made up of the 24 selected All-Stars and a fourth being the winner of the Rising Stars Challenge.
NBA All-Star Game format: Here’s how the league’s mini-tournament will work — and who will choose the teams
James Herbert
Even though the players are distributed differently, the process of selecting the All-Stars themselves remains the same. Next week, the NBA will announce the 14 reserves chosen by the league’s head coaches. Thursday night, however, we learned who had been chosen as the 10 “starters” for the 2024-25 All-Star teams.
Once again, the reserves will be announced next Thursday, January 30, on TNT. For now, though, we have the first 10 All-Stars for the 2024-25 season.
Here are our takeaways from the starters announcement.
LeBron’s fame, Steph trumps merit
One of the major stories of this NBA season has been the league’s confidence in the enduring star power of LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. Even as they near the end of their legendary careers, they remain the faces of the league. They were the headliners for Team USA over the summer, and they are still frequently featured in nationally televised games, even though neither team figures prominently in the conversation on the championship. The All-Star Game is above all a game of stars. James, Curry and Durant are the stars fans want to see. So it’s no surprise that they’re starting.
But on merit? Well…it’s not clear that these are the right choices. James shares a team with Anthony Davis, for example, and Davis outplays him, outplays him, and is miles ahead of him on defense. The Lakers averaged 8.8 points per 100 possessions better with James out than with him. However, the Lakers have 6.3 points per 100 possessions with Davis in it than without him. If a Laker had to be chosen, it would probably be Davis. If it wasn’t a Laker, Spurs star Victor Wembanyama probably would have been snubbed. How often is a favorite Defensive Player of the Year averaging over 24 points and nearly 11 rebounds per game left out of a starting lineup?
And then there’s Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, who isn’t just outplaying Curry this season. Surprisingly, he’s arguably even having a better 3-point shooting season. He is making 42.6% of the 9.8 attempts he takes per game while Curry is making 40.7% of the 10.6 attempts he takes each night. Edwards is definitely more explosive. He’s a much better defender. Curry obviously has his virtues, but on paper, Edwards certainly looked like the more deserving candidate.
Once again, it’s an All-Star game, and ultimately, Edwards and Wembanyama will make the final roster and finally get their due as the faces of the league. But for now, they are still waiting their turn, behind the last generation.
LaMelo left out despite massive fan support
LaMelo Ball not only won the Eastern Conference guard fan vote, he absolutely dominated it. In the final tally released last week, he had accumulated more than 1.9 million votes. Donovan Mitchell, second, had not reached 1.6 million. For most of NBA history, that would have been enough. Fan voting used to be the sole determinant of All-Star starters. And then the Georgian nation almost voted Zaza Pachulia for the 2017 match and the system changed.
Now the media and players also have a say, but that hasn’t stopped fans from bringing questionable players into the game. Andrew Wiggins was a starter in 2022, for example, because he won the vote fans and did just well enough among those two other voting bodies to get in. Ball, it seems, did not.
This speaks to a serious disconnect in how the ball is perceived between fans and the rest of the basketball world. On social networks, his highlights often go viral. He is among the most popular basketball players due to his pure visual appeal. But his Hornets are one of the worst teams in the NBA. They rank 28th in offense. Clearly, there is a significant portion of the media and gaming population that still does not take him seriously as a winning player. Until he can prove otherwise, he’ll have a hard time starting an All-Star Game, no matter how popular he is.
Curry is the perfect All-Star Weekend host
It’s an old-fashioned sentiment, but All-Star Weekend is a lot more fun when a hometown hero hosts the festivities. Curry is the ideal emcee for the league’s flagship regular-season event, an elder statesman who seems likely to play a significant role in Saturday night’s slate before also playing on Sunday.
Does having a local player at the heart of All-Star Weekend change much from a practical standpoint? No, but remember that these events are all about celebrating and promoting the game. Having the fans in the building invested in a single player and that same player being determined to put on a show for their own fans creates an environment much more conducive to this type of celebration.
We knew Curry was going to play in this game, but even if he was a questionable starting pick on merit, starting him is the best overall outcome for us as viewers.
