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NBA officially announces starters for All-Star game

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All the #NBAVote hashtags on Twitter and fan ballots on the NBA’s official site have come down to this: The NBA revealed the starters and team captains for the 2018 All-Star game in Los Angeles.

LeBron James and Stephen Curry are your team captains as the top vote-getters in the Eastern and Western Conference, respectively.

Joining them in the starting lineup is a motley array of fan favorites.

For the East, James is joined by his former Cavaliers teammate and current member of the Boston Celtics Kyrie Irving, along with DeMar DeRozan of the Raptors, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Bucks and Joel Embiid of the 76ers.

The West’s starting lineup includes Curry plus Warriors teammate Kevin Durant, James Harden of the Rockets and the big man combo of Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins from the Pelicans.

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The rest of the team — well, that’s where things get interesting. NBA coaches will select a pool of 25 players for the reserves, while the starters will be put into a pool of their own, each completely independent of conference affiliation, which served purely to get an even four starters per conference in the fan voting.

Once that’s done, Curry and James will pick their teams just like on the playground. Their first four selections must come from the starter pool, then the other eight guys on each team will come from the pool of reserves.

And if you’re scoring at home, yes, that means there will be nine guys who are put onto the playground but who will have a bad day at recess when they don’t get picked.

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The final, full team rosters will be announced Jan. 25, and there will be a lot of talk about those nine snubs, since it won’t be the coaches or some deep-state media cabal conspiring against them — they will have LeBron and Steph to blame.

That will make for some fun playoff scenarios when it’s time for revenge, won’t it? Will LeBron snub Victor Oladipo, then have to face the Pacers — who already have beaten Cleveland three times in the regular season — in Round 1, a series where one angry shooting guard will be out for blood?

Likewise, Minnesota has a potential date in the second round with Golden State; would Steph snub Karl-Anthony Towns or Jimmy Butler?

And speaking of teammates, just because Irving is in the starter pool doesn’t mean LeBron has to pick him. What if he goes with Harden as his point guard, leaving Irving in a position where he drops to the seventh or eighth pick because he and Curry play the same position and therefore he has no natural fit on these All-Star squads? Irving and James have enough bad blood …

The possibilities are endless, and for the NBA, it’s a great way to inject a bunch of storylines into the second half of the regular season, a time that is too often about teams resting their starters for the playoffs or bad teams tanking for draft position. The league often goes into a lull in March and April as fans watch the college game while waiting for the playoffs to start in the pros.

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Plus, just imagine if Cousins and Davis end up guarding each other, or if LeBron, allowed to pick first, scarfs up Durant?

Sure, the All-Star game has never been about defense, more than once flirting with the magical 200-point mark in its history.

But will all that civility go out the window for playground bragging rights? Will Staples Center turn into Rucker Park?

Man, you have got to hand it to Adam Silver and the Competition Committee. The NBA has gone above and beyond to make this one a fun weekend for the fans.

So mark your calendars, folks. Feb. 18 is going to be a fantastic day to watch sports, with the Daytona 500 in the afternoon and the NBA All-Star game at night.

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Boston born and raised, Fox has been writing about sports since 2011. He covered ESPN Friday Night Fights shows for The Boxing Tribune before shifting focus and launching Pace and Space, the home of "Smart NBA Talk for Smart NBA Fans", in 2015. He can often be found advocating for various NBA teams to pack up and move to his adopted hometown of Seattle.
Boston born and raised, Fox has been writing about sports since 2011. He covered ESPN Friday Night Fights shows for The Boxing Tribune before shifting focus and launching Pace and Space, the home of "Smart NBA Talk for Smart NBA Fans", in 2015. He can often be found advocating for various NBA teams to pack up and move to his adopted hometown of Seattle.
Birthplace
Boston, Massachusetts
Education
Bachelor of Science in Accounting from University of Nevada-Reno
Location
Seattle, Washington
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Sports




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