Cavaliers stars LeBron James and Kyrie Irving are your leaders in the clubhouse in voting for February’s NBA All-Star game. James (595,288 votes) and Irving (543,030) lead the top top Western Conference vote-getters Kevin Durant (541,209) and Steph Curry (523,597). The game will be held February 19th at New Orleans’ Smoothie King Center.
Also notable for the Cavaliers is the fact that Kevin Love is third among Eastern Conference forwards behind James and Milwaukee’s breakout star Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Voting is up this year, thanks in large part to the ease of the voting process. Fans can take to twitter to vote simply by using the hashtag #NBAVOTE and including the players’ first and last names. According to the NBA’s official website, voting is up 138% compared to the same time period last season.
The Cavaliers continue to make a lot of buzz around the NBA. This current moral victory is just another indication of the respect the Cavaliers have garnered around the league since winning the NBA Championship last June.
The attention that James and Irving are receiving isn’t without warrant. At 32 years of age, James is playing some of the best basketball of his career. In 31 games, the King is averaging 25.8 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 8.5 assists per game. It is James’ highest scoring average since returning to Cleveland and his second-highest assist average of his entire career (he averaged 8.6 assists per game in the 2009-2010 season with the Cavaliers). James has looked carefree as he continues to stuff the stat sheet while showing no signs of age.
Irving, who has continued his development to be one the best point guards in the league, is averaging a career high in points per game at 23.9 and his second-highest totals in assists at 6.0 per game. And it’s not just the numbers that are eye-catching. After missing much of last season recovering from a knee injury in the NBA Finals, Irving has entered the 2016-2017 season with more bounce in his step and the same ability to score from seemingly impossible angles from around the basket. His recent play has been particularly impressive, as it seems Irving is beginning to find his groove as a distributor, as well. Irving has six games this season in which he has dished out double-digit assists, five of which have come in one of his last seven games played.
Finally, in the category of gamesmanship, it’s yet another victory for the Cavaliers over the Warriors. After coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals, the NBA Champs overcame a 14-point deficit on Christmas Day to defeat the Warriors. Having both James and Irving ahead of Durant and Curry is just another bullet to the list of ways the Cavaliers continue to edge Golden State.
It truly is remarkable that a market as small as Cleveland could garner the NBA’s two leading vote-getters. The year 2016 was a great year for Cleveland sports overall, and 2017 hasn’t started out that bad, either.
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