Mavs Star Luka Doncic Leads NBA in First Returns All-Star Voting
The first returns of the NBA's All-Star fan voting are in, and Dallas Mavericks' star Luka Doncic currently leads the entire league with a total of 1,073,957 votes. The only other two players to eclipse one million votes in the first returns were reigning league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James. Doncic's 'unicorn' running mate, Kristaps Porzingis, also did some damage, despite having an up-and-down start to the season. Porzingis tallied 171,749 votes, which was good enough for seventh in Western Conference frontcourt voting.
As a rookie, Doncic had no problems whatsoever in the fan-voting portion of the All-Star voting process, but he couldn't quite get enough from the media and players to make it across the finish line. As a sophomore, however, there should be no question about it -- Luka Doncic is an All-Star, and really, he's much more than that. He's a bonafide superstar and MVP candidate as a 20-year-old.
So far this season, Doncic is averaging 29.0 points, 9.5 rebounds and 8.9 assists, and the most impressive part is that he's doing it all in just 32 minutes per game. There's been a handful of occasions this season where the 5th-place Mavs have had things wrapped up early, meaning Doncic didn't have to play in the fourth quarters of those games.
The fan-voting part of this process is more of a popularity contest than anything else, but it's still great to know just how well-liked and marketable your young franchise player is. And depending on how the player voting unfolds, maybe we can start dreaming about how this kind of stuff could be a plus for future free agencies as well.
