The 2023 NBA All-Star Game will be taking place in Utah from February 17th to the 19th. Kevin Durant, who couldn’t play in last year’s All-Star game due to injury, has been sidelined from play with the Brooklyn Nets this past month as well due to an MCL sprain.
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The Nets did however release an update on his injury, saying that he is progressing just as expected and will be re-evaluated in 2 weeks from now. With the ASG in 3 weeks from the 25th of January, it’s safe to say that this time around, there is a chance that fans get to see Durant take to All-Star Game.
Currently, KD is 2nd amongst Eastern Conference frontcourt players with his fan votes coming to 5.8 million. This is just a hundred thousand short of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s 5.97 million votes. Overall, the ‘Slim Reaper’ is 3rd in votes for the All-Star game behind Giannis and of course, LeBron James.
Kevin Durant predicted how this year’s All-Star Game draft would go
Kevin Durant, on his ETCs podcast, suggested to his co-host, Eddie Gonzalez, that the All-Star Game should implement a draft that takes place in real time. This would mean that the All-Star captains would have to pick who they want on their team on the same day as the ASG, not a few days prior.
Emulating a classic schoolyard type situations where two team captains pick who they want to play with, KD and Eddie even gave solutions on how to make this happen. You can have two jerseys for every All-Star ready to go and the players can have two pairs of shoes to go with either color jersey ready as well.
Heard it here first https://t.co/Ww2uvU3JrX
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) January 25, 2023
WORD FOR WORD BAR FOR BAR @NBA https://t.co/gWME87DvCj
— Eddie Gonzalez (@bansky) January 25, 2023
Well, looks like the league was listening in on this conversation between the two podcast hosts as it has been revealed that this is exactly what is going to happen for this year’s All-Star Game draft.
How much say do fans have in All-Star votes?
Fans make up for 50% of the vote when it comes to selecting who plays in the All-Star Game. The rest 50% is divided equally between the media getting 25% and players across the league getting the other 25%.
All-Star captains are decided as being the two players with the most number of votes from either conference. With the final voting out, this year’s All-Star captains would be LeBron James from the West and Giannis from the East.