On Thursday, the second wave of fan voting for the 2025 NBA All-Star game was revealed. If you didn't already see it, here is what it looked like:
Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo continue to lead in the NBA’s second 2024-25 All-Star fan voting: pic.twitter.com/vA0VXIWoUC
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) January 9, 2025
As a refresher, fans can only vote for starters. Fans can vote for starters through either the NBA app or, for those who don't like/don't have the app, the NBA.com website. It is important that fans exercise their right to vote because the fan vote accounts for 50% of the equation. The other portion is decided by the media (25%) and coaches (25%).
So, for the sake of interpreting these results, what matters is who is in the top three in each conference in frontcourt voting. For the Eastern Conference, those players are Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jayson Tatum, and Karl-Anthony Towns. As for the Western Conference, the top three are Nikola Jokic, Kevin Durant, and LeBron James.
Then, for the backcourt/guards, it is the top two spots that matter. In the Eastern Conference, those spots are occupied by LaMelo Ball and Donovan Mitchell. And in the Western Conference, we have Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Stephen Curry.
Sacramento Kings All-Star Starter Drought
The only two Sacramento Kings players we see in these results are De'Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis. Fox is eighth in Western Conference backcourt voting, and Sabonis is ninth in frontcourt voting. That's cool and a nod to their excellence as players, but given the fact that both of them are over a million votes away from getting one of those top spots, it looks like neither of them will be All-Star starters this year.
That means that, for the 24th straight season, the Kings will not have an All-Star starter. The last time they had an All-Star starter was in 2000-01 (Chris Webber).
According to RealGM, there have only been two times since the Kings moved to Sacramento in 1984 that the team has had an All-Star starter. There was the 2000-01 Webber season, and the other time was in 1993-94 with Mitch Richmond.
Speaking of Richmond, he is the only Kings player (since they moved to Sacramento) to ever win All-Star MVP. However, it wasn't the season he was a starter. He actually did it in 1994-95 (the year after his starting nod). In that game, he played 22 minutes and scored 23 points on 10-of-13 shooting.
Anyway, when is the next time the Kings will have an All-Star starter? And more importantly, who will that player be?