It's An All-Star Game, Not A Popularity Contest

This weekend, the Staples Center in Los Angeles will be taken over by the NBA's greatest players in the annual All-Star game. It's a weekend of festivities, starting with the Celebrity All-Star Game on Friday night, (it is always great to see which celebs can actually play some ball). The Dunk Contest, 3-point Contest, and Skills Challenge all take the stage Saturday night, followed by the NBA All-Star game Sunday. The game showcases East versus West in a showdown of the game's best players this year. At least that is what it should be.  In reality, it's a game that highlights who the fans feel are the most popular players in the league. Every year, true fans of the game cringe when they see that Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady have been named All-Stars, despite having bad seasons or not even playing due to injury. That's the consequence of allowing fan voting. It's a flawed system that doesn't give the best players their due.

Fans only vote for the starters and then the coaches vote for the bench players which is good. If it weren't for the coaches who knows what the rosters would look like. Now, I give the fans credit for their selections this year because they all seem right to me, except for one. The East starting lineup will feature Derrick Rose at the point, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade on the wings and Amare Stoudamire and Dwight Howard in the post. All five players are in the running for the MVP award at the end of the year so they are very deserving of the honor. In the West Chris Paul will run the point guard position with Kobe Bryant as his shooting guard. Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant will be the forwards and the man in the middle will be....Yao Ming???? Yao Ming, that guy from China who has appeared in five games of this year before being injured? Yeah, that guy. Seriously now, I know he's a good player when healthy and I appreciate that the fans in China rally around him but this is absurd. Commissioner David Stern chose Kevin Love as the replacement for Yao but it's sad that the fans couldn't get it right the first time.

Players like Allen Iverson, Yao and Tracy McGrady have made All-Star teams simply because they were popular and not because they were having the best year. A lesser known player rarely has a chance to be named unless the coaches vote him in. It's not just the NBA either. Every major sport thinks fans should have the right to vote for who is an all-star that year and every year the rosters are flawed in some way. I understand that the leagues want their fans to feel like they are part of the process but it's getting out of hand. I want to see the best players take the floor on Sunday night, not the most popular ones. Recently it has also been announced that a portion of the voting for the baseball Hall of Fame will be done by fans. This is wrong because if anyone can vote what qualifies them? Not everyone can have a say in what happens and that's life. Maybe for an All-Star game it's okay but when the fan voting starts coming to the Hall of Fame that's when I start losing interest.