If the votes continue to roll in, either Warriors’ point guard Steph Curry or Warriors’ forward Kevin Durant will serve as a captain in this year’s NBA All-Star game.
That’s good news for Golden State fans and Curry, but it’s not exactly a role Durant thinks he would thrive in.
The league switched up the All-Star format this season, and the highest vote-getter from each conference will now serve as a team captain. Instead of leading the Western Conference and Eastern Conference squads, the highest vote-getters will hold a draft and switch back and forth picking from a pool of 22 other All-Stars to serve as their teammates.
In a recent piece published by Anthony Slater of The Athletic, Durant said he would rather have someone else in charge of the draft so that he could focus on playing the game.
“I’d rather somebody else do it. It’s cool to be an All-Star, but all the extra stuff … I just want to go play in the game,” Durant told Slater. “[The new format]’s cool, a different way, a creative way that’s good for the fans. But me, I’ll let somebody else pick the teams.”
Curry said he be happy to embrace the role of serving as an All-Star game captain, explaining that it’s an opportunity to have an impact on the game in the first year of a new format.
“Why not?” Curry said. “I’ll be the first to usher in the new system. I used to go to the playground all the time, and you wanted to be the guy picking teams. That meant you were something on the court back in the day. It’ll be a cool vibe to see how it all shakes out and how unique you can make the lineups.”
After the NBA revealed the first batch of All-Star votes, it was Durant, not Curry who led all Western Conference players. However, Curry has overtaken Durant and now leads his teammate by fewer than 44,000 votes, which means the two could go down to the wire for the right to draft their own team.
If both Klay Thompson and Draymond Green also earn All-Star nods, whoever serves as the Western Conference captain will have a difficult time keeping the Warriors’ core together. Thompson ranks fourth among Western Conference guards while Green has received the third-most votes of Western Conference frontcourt players.
The NBA fan vote accounts for 50 percent of the total vote, while players and media each have a 25 percent say in determining the game’s 10 starters. The 12 reserves for the contest are selected by the coaches.