Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has passed Steph Curry in the All-Star team voting in the West, his voting standing at 6,827,449, some 800,000+ votes ahead of the Golden State Warriors player.
Voting for the All-Star starters will come to an end this weekend, with the starters announced on Thursday. The leaders in each conference are then named captains, which would see James lead the West and the Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant, who leads Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks in the East.
The fan votes count as half the final vote, with another 25% coming from the media and the remaining 25% being counted from players. If this were based purely on form this season, then LeBron would not be so far ahead of Curry, but clearly, a fan vote has a lot more to do with popularity than how a player has performed over the course of the season.
The Lakers have struggled for form this season, and as you can see on the odds comparison service https://www.sidelines.io they sit in seventh place in the NBA title futures odds at present, with odds of (+1700).
Indeed it’s entirely plausible that LeBron could miss out on postseason action with the Lakers sitting with a poor 23-24 record, in third place in the Pacific Division and down in eighth in the Western Conference, and could have to take part in the ‘play-in’ tournament in order to make it to the playoffs.
However, in recent weeks, LeBron has been in great form, top-scoring for the Lakers in 17-straight games, topping 30 points in 13 of those games, and he’ll have to hope that his team-mates can keep up with him if Frank Vogel’s team is going to extend their season.
LeBron has been very impressive when it comes to his offensive displays and is in a very positive frame of mind despite the Lakers being 2-5 in recent weeks;
“I don’t need to score 30 a night, but I’m in one of the best zones offensively I’ve been in, in my career,”
“And I don’t plan on stopping. That’s just how I feel. I feel fantastic. Shooting the ball extremely well. I didn’t shoot the 3-ball well tonight, but all eight of them felt great. Shooting efficient from the free-throw line, shooting efficient from the field. Very efficient at the rim.”
“So I don’t go into the game saying you got to score 30 or you guys don’t have a chance to win the game. I just play the game. The scoring has been happening organically.”
Vogel will hope that Anthony Davis can return from injury to help the Lakers push towards the playoffs, and they’ll need plenty of strong results between now and mid-April if they are going to hit the heights they should given the investment made over the offseason in improving their roster.
LeBron James is now into his 19th NBA season and will hope to secure his fifth title, but currently, that seems like a big ask.