Steve Kerr Rips Players For Not Taking Their All-Star Votes Seriously

For the first time in NBA All-Star Game history, players had a chance to vote on the game’s starters. While their choices didn’t diverge terribly from the eventual starters chosen by a coalition of fans, players, and media members, several players who hadn’t played a minute received votes. Fans will vote for undeserving guys like Georgios Papagiannis and Nick Young because that’s what fans do, but it was somewhat surprising to see players opt out of a serious vote and choose exclusively teammates (or in Tony Allen’s case, the most absurd players possible).

Warriors coach Steve Kerr agrees, and he criticized players for their unserious votes before this evening’s game against the Heat:

“I am very disappointed in the players,” said Kerr, who cast his ballot Sunday for the reserves. “They asked for the vote and a lot of them just made a mockery of it. … I saw the list. I saw all the guys who got votes. Were you allowed to vote for yourself? I don’t know. Were guys voting for themselves? There were 50 guys on there that had no business getting votes.”

“A lot of guys wrote in their buddies for the presidential campaign,” said Kerr, who is likely to coach the All-Star game. “So maybe that was their own way of making a statement. But I think if you give the players a vote, they should take it serious.”

If the point of giving players a vote was to further legitimize the all-star starters then, yeah, voting for Brice Johnson sure undermines that.

[ San Francisco Chronicle]