Curry and Durant named NBA All-Star starters

NBA All-Star ballots are in, and two Warriors will be starting the game in New Orleans. Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry were voted in along with the Spurs Kawhi Leonard, the Pelicans Anthony Davis and the Rockets James Harden for the West.

The Cavs also got two starters in their conference as Kyrie Irving and LeBron James will start for the East with the Bucks Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Bulls Jimmy Butler and the Raptors DeMar DeRozan.

This is the first year that the new voting system for All-Stars was in place with fans no longer counting for 100 percent of the vote.

This year 50 percent was based on fan votes, 25 percent were votes from current players and 25 percent from media members. They are then ranked based on what position they finish in each of the votes with the fan vote rank getting multiplied by two and divided by four.

With the new voting process one name was noticeably absent, Thunder guard Russell Westbrook. Westbrook actually finished in a three-way tie with Harden and Curry and in that event the tiebreaker is the highest fan vote.

So while Westbrook ranked first in player and media votes, he finished third behind Curry and Harden in the fan vote and so was left out of a starting spot.

Klay Thompson placed fourth in guards in the West and was joined in the top 10 by Andre Iguodala who finished ninth.

In the frontcourt race Draymond Green finished fifth just behind the three starters and DeMarcus Cousins. The person right behind Green? That’d be fan favorite Zaza Pachulia.

He would actually have been starting the game alongside Durant in any other year as he finished second in fan voting.

The rest of the lineup will be picked by the respective coaches and will be revealed January 26. The All-Star game is scheduled for February 19.

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Curtis Uemura is SFBay’s Golden State Warriors beat writer. Follow @SFBay and @CUemura on Twitter and at SFBay.ca for full coverage of Warriors basketball.