Yesterday, Milwaukee got the expected good news that Giannis Antetokounmpo had been voted in as a starter to his second straight NBA All-Star Game, finishing a close second in overall votes to LeBron James. Next week, we’ll find out which team Antetokounmpo ends up on – James and Stephen Curry, the leading vote-getters in each conference, are the team captains in the new pickup-style game format and will choose their rosters – and whether any more Bucks are named All-Stars.
The voting for the 10 starters was done by the fans (weighed 50 percent), the players (25 percent) and the media (25 percent). The All-Star reserves will still be selected by the coaches in each conference, and then James and Curry will pick their teams from that pool of 14 players. The All-Star reserves will be announced on Jan. 23 and the two team rosters, consisting of 12 players each, will be revealed on Jan. 25.
The Bucks had been pushing hard for Antetokounmpo’s teammates, Khris Middleton and Eric Bledsoe, to join the Greek Freak in the annual high-scoring, defense-optional exhibition. And, while avid Milwaukee fans have recently gotten a bit of a bad rap for their Twitter anger and #FireKidd campaign, they responded faithfully and in force to the social media call-to-action of voting for their team’s players to be All-Stars.
After all the votes were tallied, players were ranked in each conference by position (guard and frontcourt), with the two guards and three frontcourt players with the best weighted scores in each conference being named All-Star starters. Click here to see the final voting results.
Antetokounmpo finished first in player votes (with 226), tied for first in media votes (99) and second in fan votes (2,530,211), for an overall weighted rank score of 1.5, just behind James’ 1.25. Middleton, who was classified as a frontcourt player, finished 14th in player votes (10), 12th in fan votes (109,913) and did not receive a media vote, giving him a weighed score of 10.5. Bledsoe, a guard, was 10th in player voting (10), 12th in fan voting (124,232) and also did not receive a media vote, earning an overall score of 10.
Middleton and Bledsoe are unlikely to make the team, but not quite longshots. Middleton has a low-key personality and unflashy, high-functioning game that endears him less to fans than NBA coaches, who could select him despite being ranked behind seven non-starting frontcourt players (though two of those are Dwight Howard and Enes freaking Kanter). Bledsoe, who came to Milwaukee via trade with Phoenix in December, hasn’t had the sustained galvanizing effect on the Bucks in recent weeks that he did initially and also was behind seven players with higher weighted scores.
But debating whether or not Middleton and Bledsoe deserve to be All-Stars is a Sisyphean exercise better undertaken on Basketball Twitter (ALL DUE RESPECT, BASKETBALL TWITTER). Less tiresome, more interesting and vastly more fun is taking a look at all the Milwaukee players who got at least one vote from their NBA peers, as well as the scrubs who benefited from Bucks Nation tweeting out their names and appeared in the full, final voting results. (If you think Rashad Vaughn isn’t showing up below, prepare yourself now.)
In all, 18 different Bucks received All-Star starter votes – some from players, most from fans – which is, impressively, more Bucks than are even allowed on an NBA roster (one player has since been waived). Good on you, Milwaukee. Without overthinking this, we wanted to easily evaluate the relative deservingness of these vote-getters, so we're using Player Efficiency Rating (PER), the handy all-in-one statistical performance measure for which a 15.0 rating represents league-average, and comparing it to their weighted All-Star starter score:
Here are all of those Bucks players that received votes, ranked:
1. Giannis Antetokounmpo, frontcourt
Player votes: 226
Media votes: 99
Fan votes: 2,530,211
Weighted score: 1.5
PER: 29.5
2. Eric Bledsoe, guard
Player votes: 10
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 124,232
Weighted score: 10
PER: 18.8
3. Khris Middleton, frontcourt
Player votes: 14
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 109,913
Weighted score: 10.5
PER: 16.7
4. Malcolm Brogdon, guard
Player votes: 7
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 39,598
Weighted score: 13.25
PER: 14.3
5. Thon Maker, frontcourt
Player votes: 2
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 19,158
Weighted score: 30
PER: 9.6
6. Matthew Dellavedova, guard
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 13,206
Weighted score: 31.25
PER: 9.0
7. Tony Snell, guard
Player votes: 3
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 5,144
Weighted score: 33.25
PER: 9.8
8. John Henson, frontcourt
Player votes: 1
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 16,459
Weighted score: 34.25
PER: 15.6
9. Jabari Parker, frontcourt
Player votes: 1
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 13,373
Weighted score: 37.25
PER: 0.0 (has not played yet this season)
10 Jason Terry, guard
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 3,862
Weighted score: 47.75
PER: 5.1
11. DeAndre Liggins, guard
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 2,512
Weighted score: 52.25
PER: 5.0 (waived Jan. 7)
12. Sean Kilpatrick, guard
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 1,555
Weighted score: 56.5
PER: 12.9
13. Sterling Brown, guard
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 1,817
Weighted score: 58.75
PER: 11.0
14. Rashad Vaughn, guard
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 1,544
Weighted score: 61.25
PER: 12.3
15. Xavier Munford, guard
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 427
Weighted score: 72.25
PER: 0.0 (has not yet appeared in a game for Bucks)
16. Joel Bolomboy, frontcourt
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 2,716
Weighted score: 73.5
PER: 12.0
17. D.J. Wilson, frontcourt
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 2,713
Weighted score: 74
PER: 0.5
18. Mirza Teletovic, frontcourt
Player votes: 0
Media votes: 0
Fan votes: 2,614
Weighted score: 75
PER: 13.9
What lessons have we learned: All-Star voting is a popularity contest and PER is a flawed system.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
