We’ve officially reached the mid-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-wide pilgrimage to San Francisco, but for now, we still need to pick the teams — and the first 10 players were unveiled on Thursday night.
Lakers star LeBron James became the all-time NBA record holder for All-Star appearances last season with 20, and now the 40-year-old has extended that figure to 21 as he was once again named a starter in the West. In the East, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Bucks led all players in the 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 will be from each conference.
Below are the Eastern Conference starters.
And here are the Western Conference starters.
As a reminder, this year’s format is going to be slightly different.
For most of NBA history, the All-Star Game was divided between conferences. The best players in the East faced the best players in the West. Recently, the league experimented with players drafting one another to build their rosters, and when that failed, they moved back to conferences last season. Now, they’ve abandoned the two-team concept altogether. This year’s All-Star “game” will feature four teams: three comprised 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 league’s mini-tournament will work — and who will pick the teams
James Herbert
Even though the players are being divided up differently, the selection process for the All-Stars themselves remains the same. Next week, the NBA will announce the 14 reserves chosen by the league’s head coaches. On Thursday night, however, we learned who was picked as the 10 “starters” for the 2024-25 All-Star teams.
Once again, the reserves will be announced next Thursday, Jan. 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.
Stardom of LeBron, Steph outweighs merit
One of the major stories of this season in the NBA has been the league’s reliance on the enduring star power of LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. Even as they near the end of their legendary careers, they are still the faces of the league. They headlined Team USA over the summer, and they are still frequently featured in nationally televised games despite none of their teams figuring prominently into the championship conversation. The All-Star Game is, first and foremost, a game about stars. James, Curry and Durant are the stars that the fans want to see. It should therefore come as no surprise, then, that they are starting.
But on merit? Well… it’s not clear that they were the right choices. James shares a team with Anthony Davis, for instance, and Davis outscores him, outrebounds him and is miles ahead of him on defense. The Lakers are 8.8 points per 100 possessions better with James out than they are with him in. However, the Lakers are 6.3 points per 100 possessions with Davis in than they are with him out. If a Laker was going to be picked, it probably should’ve been Davis. If it wasn’t going to be a Laker, Spurs star Victor Wembanyama was probably snubbed. How often does a Defensive Player of the Year favorite averaging more than 24 points and nearly 11 rebounds per game get left out of a starting lineup?
And then there’s Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, who isn’t just outscoring Curry this season. Amazingly, he’s even having arguably 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 tries he takes every night. Edwards is significantly more explosive. He’s a far better defender. Curry obviously has his virtues, but on paper, Edwards certainly looked like the more worthy candidate.
Again, it’s an All-Star game, and ultimately, Edwards and Wembanyama will make the final rosters and get their due as faces of the league eventually. For now, though, they’re still waiting their turn behind the last generation.
LaMelo left out despite heavy fan support
LaMelo Ball didn’t just win the Eastern Conference guard fan vote, he absolutely dominated it. At the final released tally last week, he had accumulated over 1.9 million votes. Second-place Donovan Mitchell hadn’t reached 1.6 million. For most of NBA history, that would have been enough. The fan vote used to be the sole determinant for All-Star starters. And then the nation of Georgia almost voted Zaza Pachulia into the 2017 game and the system changed.
Now, media and players have a say as well, but that hasn’t stopped the fans from getting questionable players into the game. Andrew Wiggins was a starter in 2022, for instance, because he won the fan vote and did just well enough among those other two voting bodies to get in. Ball, it seems, did not.
That points to a serious disconnect in the way Ball is perceived between fans and the rest of the basketball world. On social media, his highlights frequently go viral. He is among the most popular players in basketball on pure, visual appeal. But his Hornets are one of the worst teams in the NBA. They rank 28th in offense. Clearly, there is a meaningful segment of both the media and the player population that still don’t take him seriously as a winning player. Until he can prove otherwise, he’s going to have a hard time starting an All-Star Game no matter how popular he gets.
Curry is perfect All-Star Weekend host
It’s an old fashioned sentiment, but All-Star Weekend is just much more fun when there’s a hometown hero hosting the festivities. Curry is the perfect emcee for the league’s marquee regular-season event, an elder statesman who seems likely to factor heavily into the Saturday night slate before playing on Sunday as well.
Does having a hometown player at the heart of All-Star Weekend change much in a practical sense? No. But remember, these events are meant, first and foremost, to celebrate and promote the game. Having the fans in the building invested in a single player, and having that same player determined to put on a show for his own fans, creates an environment far more conducive to that sort of celebration.
We knew Curry was going to play in this game, but even if he was a questionable starting choice on merit, having him start is the best overall outcome for us as viewers.
