It's Legitimately Insane That Darius Garland Is Still Near The Bottom Of The NBA All Star Fan Voting
Rocky Widner. Getty Images.
There's a strong chance I'm the only person on the planet that even cares about this NBA All Star Fan Vote. I get that. When I first blogged the initial results at the beginning of the month, it was more of the same. NBA fans are morons and nobody takes this seriously. It's a big time problem with giving fans such a heavy weighted percentage, and everyone knows it's a popularity contest.
But I'm sorry, I cannot stay silent. I have to speak for those who don't have the platform. I am sitting here, looking at this most recent list of results and I have a simple question. What the hell does Darius Garland have to do to get some respect/recognition from fans? Why is he still 9th in this voting? Still well behind DRose and Kyrie. It was nice to see FVV move up, he's for sure deserving, but seriously, what the hell do people need to see from Darius Garland? The production? It's there. He currently ranks 3rd in point guard scoring in the East. His 19.8/3.4/8.0 on 47/37% splits are essentially right in line with LaMelo's 19/7/7.7 on 42/37%, only he plays on the better team. Do you think fans care? Of course not, because LaMelo is flashy and popular.
Who cares that Garland was just named player of the week
Who cares that the Cavs are tied for the 3rd most wins this month only trailing Memphis and Dallas with Garland averaging 20/5/10.6. It's bananaland that his votes are so low. I'm not even sure this is a Cleveland thing either! Look at Jarrett Allen, he has 507k votes! Are Cavs fans just not voting for Garland or something? How can the starting point guard for one of the better surprises in the entire league who is putting up All Star production on a consistent and nightly basis still not getting votes? I'm not even a Cavs fan for crying out loud and this makes me mad. All you have to do is watch Garland play and you come away saying
"Yup, this dude is an All Star"
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You know how Ja Morant has been awesome this year and is part of a great story with the Grizzlies? You have people going on television talking about how he might be a better playoff option THAN FUCKING GIANNIS. He's wildly popular and a marketing dream and his votes reflect that. I could make the case that Garland is having a Morant-Lite type of season for the equally surprising Cavs, yet by the look of that list it's like nobody cares. Make it make sense. You would think that given this is the 3rd set of results for this, that Garland would move up just like FVV did. In reality, he's in the same spot. When the 2nd round of results came in, Garland was 9th at 227,813. He's only gone up 120k and I'm pretty sure some of those voting days counted for double. For comparison, Derrick Rose also went up about 120K and he is not playing.
All I know is this. The coaches/media need to correct this wrong and make sure Garland is a reserve. The Cavs are just 2.5 games from the top spot in the Eastern Conference. Why do we think that is? In large part because Garland made the leap. I don't know why fans refuse to acknowledge it, maybe they simply aren't paying attention or something but how could that be if they are able to recognize what Jarrett Allen is currently doing.
End of rant. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.