Dallas Basketball

Mavs Star Luka Doncic Leads NBA in First Returns All-Star Voting

Luka Doncic barely missed the NBA All-Star game as a rookie, but that shouldn't be the case in his spectacular sophomore season.

Dalton Trigg

Mavs Star Luka Doncic Leads NBA in First Returns All-Star Voting
Mavs Star Luka Doncic Leads NBA in First Returns All-Star Voting /

The first returns of the NBA's All-Star fan voting are in, and Dallas Mavericks' star Luka Doncic currently leads the entire league with a total of 1,073,957 votes. The only other two players to eclipse one million votes in the first returns were reigning league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James. Doncic's 'unicorn' running mate, Kristaps Porzingis, also did some damage, despite having an up-and-down start to the season. Porzingis tallied 171,749 votes, which was good enough for seventh in Western Conference frontcourt voting.

As a rookie, Doncic had no problems whatsoever in the fan-voting portion of the All-Star voting process, but he couldn't quite get enough from the media and players to make it across the finish line. As a sophomore, however, there should be no question about it -- Luka Doncic is an All-Star, and really, he's much more than that. He's a bonafide superstar and MVP candidate as a 20-year-old.

So far this season, Doncic is averaging 29.0 points, 9.5 rebounds and 8.9 assists, and the most impressive part is that he's doing it all in just 32 minutes per game. There's been a handful of occasions this season where the 5th-place Mavs have had things wrapped up early, meaning Doncic didn't have to play in the fourth quarters of those games.

The fan-voting part of this process is more of a popularity contest than anything else, but it's still great to know just how well-liked and marketable your young franchise player is. And depending on how the player voting unfolds, maybe we can start dreaming about how this kind of stuff could be a plus for future free agencies as well.

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Dalton Trigg
DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.

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