4 takeaways from the third round of NBA All-Star voting

Alex Caruso is really doing this.

Alright, y’all. I love chaos, but I didn’t think things would get this far.

The NBA dropped the third round of voting for the All-Star game this year just ahead of the final January 20 deadline on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

If you thought things were chaotic in round two last week, wait until you get a load of what’s going on this week. The bench guys are still on the rise, Pascal Siakam is on the move and Luka Doncic is still right on James’ tail. Just take a look at the newest All-Star Game fan votes released today:

Remember, there’s still a few days left. These aren’t the final results for the fans— but they’re probably really close to them. Even after this, we still have to take in media vote (25%) and player vote (50%) to determine who the starters are.

With that out the way, let’s get in to some of the takeaways here.

NBA Fans love chaos

That’s the only reasonable explanation for Alex Caruso rising up to No. 4 in voting for Western Conference guards. Right now, he’s got more votes under his belt than Devin Booker (577,035), Donovan Mitchell (673,917), Bradley Beal (609,899) and Ben Simmons (629,199).

Some people just love to watch the world burn. Yes, I am one of them. This is absolutely delightful. We just need to get Tacko Fall (757,375 votes) to rise a bit more.

Luka and LeBron will come down to the wire

If you had asked anyone before the season who would challenge LeBron James as the NBA’s leading All-Star vote-getter this offseason, I’m not sure how many people would’ve said Luka Doncic.

Yet, here we are. Doncic is only about 150,000 votes away from James as the leading vote getter. It’s time to stuff the ballot box, y’all. Get it done.

Pascal Siakam is rising fast

The last time we saw these results, Pascal Siakam was third in the Eastern Conference’s front court with just over 1.7 million votes. Now? He’s above Joel Embiid in second place with 2,433,411 votes. That’s a cool 700,000 votes to jump ahead.

No idea what they’re doing in Toronto to make this happen. Do we have another Biebergate on our hands? Maybe Bieber asking his fans to stream his new single, Yummy, was just code for “vote for Pascal Siakam.” I don’t know. Whatever they’re doing it’s working though.

Still no Rudy Gobert

Look, man. Jazz fans have been going absolutely crazy on Twitter over the last month. They’re complaining that nobody is talking about their team while the Jazz are on a 10 game win streak. That’s alright — nobody needs to care about the Jazz for them to be a good team.

But Rudy Gobert should absolutely be in the top 10 for front court voting and he’s not right now. He’s having the best season of his career on both ends and the Jazz are finally winning again.

Of course, Jazz fans are going crazy about it. So crazy, in fact, that they’re even lobbying for screen assists to count as a box score stat to boost his numbers. It’s been crazy. Let’s get Gobert in that top 10. Not just because he deserves it, but because Jazz fans will riot if we don’t.

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