Kyle or Kyrie? Why Politics Will Affect the Toronto Raptors Guard
By Ryan Greco
Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry is yet another case in point for why fan voting in the NBA All-Star selection needs to be limited.
As the final days of All-Star voting come to a close, Kyrie “Uncle Drew” Irving is second in votes for guards in the Eastern Conference with just under 400,000 votes, while the Toronto Raptors Kyle Lowry remains third sitting at 367,472.
With the top two spots in voting awarded to starters, and with Dwyane Wade running away in first place with almost double as many votes as Irving, it is becoming more and more clear that Lowry may end up watching the tip-off of the first ever All-Star game here in Toronto, his city, at the Air Canada Centre, his building, from the bench.
It is also another reason that DeMar DeRozan will likely be watching it from the stands.
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Irving has had a few standout performances in his 11 games to start his season, but his overall numbers have been pedestrian at best, averaging 16.5 PPG, 2.7 RPG, and 4.1 APG, hardly All-Star stats.
Meanwhile Lowry has compiled 20.8 PPG, 5.2 RPG, and 6.4 APG, considerably higher numbers than what Irving has put together.
Add in the fact that he had spent more time as his alter ego playing HORSE against Ray Allen for Pepsi (spoiler alert!) than actual time on an NBA floor, and you can begin to realize that favoritism over performance is the standard and not the exception in All-Star voting.
It is a sad conclusion for many Toronto sports fans, a reminder that for all the star power an A-list celebrity like Drake can pull in, for all the “F**** Brooklyn” headlines the Raptors GM can bellow to thousands of fans outside of Jurassic Park, and even for the fact that we are hosting the All-Star game, a player from a media juggernaut such as Cleveland, that has only played eleven games this year, still resonates to NBA fans more than us.
In the minds of most casual NBA fans, we are still “small market”.
This year, a guy like Kobe Bryant deserves to be there, much in the same way that Michael Jordan deserved to be there back in 2003 during his final season. Hell, Vince Carter (still a Raptor at the time) gave up the starting spot to MJ because he didn’t get enough votes, and nobody batted an eye.
A guy like Irving, for all of his skill, doesn’t deserve to be there over players that have put in a full body of work over the NBA season. One day he might, but this isn’t that day.
Despite all rationality, fans chose the name the name they knew, but didn’t care to look at the body of work, and just decided that the numbers and value of a player is meaningless when the other has a Pepsi deal and gets to play with LeBron James.
It is not dissimilar in the way that Yao Ming didn’t deserve to be voted in back in 2011, when a foot injury that ultimately ended his career prematurely, was given the starting spot at center despite only playing five games the whole season.
Earlier this week, Yao was elected to the basketball hall of fame, but at the time in 2011, no one thought for a second that would be his final season.
That was no swan song, that was two billion of his countrymen giving him the most ridiculous push simply for the fact that he was one of them.
No skill, no logic, just pride and prejudice.
You want to talk about Canada being biased for Lowry last season? Go right ahead, just keep in mind that Lowry put the Raptors on his back while DeMar DeRozan had missed most of the season up until that point due to injury, thus giving him some of the best numbers in the league at the backcourt.
If Canada had elected DeRozan to last year’s All-Star Game, you would have had an actual argument against the charge of fanboy-ism.
China didn’t then, and NBA fans as a whole don’t now.
What To Do?
Now that Twitter has made it easier than ever to spam votes, it might be time to start weaning off of the fans ability to make the entire decision for the starting lineups.
How to do that? Maybe limit one vote per position to each individual account on the social media network? Or have the fans select the top three players at each position, and let the media or players decide the starting five?
Ok, maybe the last suggestion was a little self-serving, but I’d rather have the final decision come down to someone who consistently covers the teams, than a fanboy with too much time on his hands from China or Cleveland.
Or maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way, maybe we should let the fans select the entire 15 man roster, and, just like a real game, have the coaches dictate the starting lineup?
In one instance, the fans feel like they have an even more powerful voice because as much as I’m knocking the fans in this article, they tend to get the overall list pretty accurate.
One look at the overall list of candidates getting votes, and you’ll see a list that is difficult to argue against on who should and shouldn’t be getting votes.
I just have an issue with the fact that the top choices over the years tend to have more marketability and brand name luster, than actual substance, or their stats over the course of this season.
Hmm, a group of voters getting behind a figure based on his charisma and marketing machine backing him, as opposed to what he has actually done in the terms of performance over the course of a certain amount of time? Now when have we ever seen that?
Next: Jose Bautista to Help Drake Coach Team Canada At NBA All-Star Celebrity Game
Democracy can be a fickle mistress sometimes.