{"id":3807,"date":"2026-01-20T04:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T20:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/lakers-lebron-james-did-not-vote-for-the-all-star-game-starter\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T04:11:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T20:11:40","slug":"lakers-lebron-james-did-not-vote-for-the-all-star-game-starter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/lakers-lebron-james-did-not-vote-for-the-all-star-game-starter\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers&#8217; LeBron James did not vote for the All-Star Game starter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"article-meta\">\n<ul class=\"authors\">\n<li class=\"mugshot-shown\">\n<div class=\"author-img\"><\/div>\n<p>Tim Bontemps<span class=\"timestamp \">Jan 19, 2026, 02:49 PM ET<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"author-overlay\">Shut up<\/p>\n<ul>Tim Bontemps is ESPN.com&#8217;s senior NBA writer who covers the league and what&#8217;s impacting it on and off the court, including the trade deadline, the expansion and his MVP Straw Polls. You can find Tim alongside Brian Windhorst and Tim MacMahon on The Hoop Collective podcast.<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>The NBA announced the starters for next month&#8217;s All-Star game Monday night &#8212; and, for the first time in a generation, Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James was not among them.<\/p>\n<p>His teammate, Luka Doncic, led the Western Conference voting, and was joined by Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama and Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry. Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo topped the Eastern voting, and will be joined by New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey, Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham and Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown.<\/p>\n<p>But the biggest news of the selection process was the omission of James, who was selected and named as a starter for a record 21 All-Star Games in his career &#8212; all since the 2005 game in Denver. But this year he didn&#8217;t come close to getting enough votes to make it into the top five in the West. James missed the first 14 games of the season with sciatica and got off to a sluggish start when he returned to the court, including having his streak of 1,297 consecutive games with at least 10 points end in Toronto last month. All this left his chances of entering this year&#8217;s All Star Game to the coaches of the league.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"inline editorial float-r\" data-behavior=\"article_related\">\n<h2 class=\"editorial-title\">Editor&#8217;s Choice<\/h2>\n<p>2 Related<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Although James was not selected as the first player, Curry, marking the 12th time in his Hall of Fame career that he was named to the All-Star Game in his career as he averaged 27.6 points per game as he neared his 38th birthday. The other player to hit double digits in Monday&#8217;s All-Star appearance was Antetokounmpo, who led the way for the East&#8217;s starters and is in the midst of his latest statistical season (28.8 points, 9.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists) even though his Bucks are currently 11th in the Eastern Conference standings.<\/p>\n<p>Doncic, meanwhile, continued his All-Star streak after missing last year&#8217;s game with the calf injury that prompted his dramatic trade with the Lakers. He leads the fan poll with an average of 33.3 points, 7.5 rebounds and 8.6 assists. It&#8217;s been another incredible season for Jokic, who before missing the last few weeks with a sprained knee was putting up impressive numbers: 29.6 points, 12.2 rebounds and 11 assists. The same can be said for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league&#8217;s Most Valuable Player, averaging 31.8 points, 4.4 rebounds and 6.2 assists for the Thunder leading the league.<\/p>\n<p>Another Western Conference All-Star spot goes to Wembanyama, who is making his first All-Star appearance after earning his first All-Star last season, and is averaging 24.5 points, 10.9 rebounds and a league-leading 2.6 blocks per game.<\/p>\n<p>Outside of Mpumalanga, Antetokounmpo is joined by Cunningham, who is making his second appearance and starting as the leader of the East-leading Pistons, who are on track to win 60 games this season in their second straight meteoric jump to consecutive wins. Another two-time All-Star, and first-timer, Maxey, who averaged over 30 points for the first time in his career and spearheaded Philadelphia&#8217;s recovery to get back into the East playoff picture after last year&#8217;s disastrous campaign. Brunson will be making his third straight All-Star appearance for the Knicks, averaging 28.2 points and 6.1 assists per game.<\/p>\n<p>The final East All-Star spot went to Brown, who averaged 29.7 points per game for the surprising Celtics, who enter Monday night&#8217;s contest against the Pistons in second place in the Eastern Conference, 4.5 games behind Detroit.<\/p>\n<p>The voting process is made up of three groups: fan voting, which takes 50% of the votes; the media voting panel, which takes 25% of the vote; and player voting, which also takes 25% of the votes.<\/p>\n<p>The reserves will be announced this coming Sunday, and are chosen by NBA coaches.<\/p>\n<p>This year, the All-Star Game adopted a &#8220;Team USA vs the World&#8221; format, with the All-Star lineup finally divided into three rosters; two will be made up of American players, and the third will be made up of international players.<\/p>\n<p>Those who started on Monday were made up of five American and five international players. If, after the 14 spots are announced, there are fewer than 16 or eight American players selected for the All-Star Game, NBA commissioner Adam Silver will add additional All-Stars until there are 16 foreign players with at least eight to fill the three slots in the game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim BontempsJan 19, 2026, 02:49 PM ET Shut up Tim Bontemps is ESPN.com&#8217;s senior NBA writer who covers the league and what&#8217;s impacting it on and off the court, including the trade deadline, the expansion and his MVP Straw Polls. You can find Tim alongside Brian Windhorst and Tim MacMahon on The Hoop Collective podcast. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3809,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions\/3809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}