Comparing NBA player and fan votes for the All-Star game

The NBA released the All-Star starter voting results this past week. Part of the formula for deciding the All-Stars are player and fan votes. I thought it’d be interesting to see where the two groups vote differently. (Media members also vote but since there are comparatively so few of them, I’ll be ignoring them for now.)

After normalizing the player and fan votes, we get the following chart:

Technically, I could just compare the player and fan vote ranks, however, that would leave a lot of information off the table.

Now, aren’t you wondering who the blue dots further away from the orange line are? I’ll tell you.

The players who were the most highly rated by the players compared to the fans were Bam Adebayo, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bradley Beal, Kemba Walker, and Ben Simmons.

The players who were the most highly rated by the fans compared to the players were Luka Doncic, Alex Caruso, Kyrie Irving, Trae Young, and Dwight Howard.

Even though Antetokounmpo, Walker, and Doncic ranked first in both player and fan votes, their relative normalized vote counts were different enough to be among the most disagreed upon players. Weird, right.

The reason for Alex Caruso’s and Dwight Howard’s appearance is clearer - Lakers. Also, 4 of the players mentioned on the fans' side are point guards as are the next two in the list - Stephen Curry and Derrick Rose.

We could pick five players from each side(picking and choosing a little bit for positions) as imaginary All-Star teams. I wonder who’d win that game.