It's really interesting to see the voting with the player and media vote being added to the fan vote now.
SummaryPlayer Voting ResultsMedia Voting ResultsHad the rules not changed this year, Zaza Pachulia would be starting for the West.
While Isaiah Thomas didn't get the fan vote, he finished 2nd in the player vote, and 1st in the media vote, so he has the players' and media's respect. But he did finish behind #1 in the player vote by a large margin (38 votes).
Avery Bradley on the other hand finished 12th in the player vote, getting as many votes as Sergio Rodriguez, and fewer votes than Jeff Teague and Nicolas Batum.
But on the other hand, Tyler Zeller, Amir Johnson, Jaylen Brown, Gerald Green as well as players who haven't even played a game this season like Khris Middleton and Mo Williams along with a bunch of other head scratchers got 1 vote each, and Ben Simmons actually got 3 player votes despite not playing a game! Olynyk even got 2 votes! So apparently at least a few players don't take this too seriously and probably just vote for every one of their teammates.
DeMarcus Cousins finished a healthy 4th in the West, and the 6th most votes for any frontcourt player from either conference (behind only LeBron, Giannis, Durant, Kawhi, and Anthony Davis), then a big gap between Cousins and the next batch of players. The players definitely respect him, only 5 votes behind Anthony Davis too.
I thought all the Knick players seemed pretty high, with Porzingis (51 votes) and Anthony finishing (50 votes) 5th and 6th in the East frontcourt, Derrick Rose finishing 9th for East guards (14 votes), and Courtney Lee and Joakim Noah getting 6 and 5 votes each.
Draymond Green (9th place, 21 votes) and Klay Thompson (8th place, 14 votes) finished low, especially when you compare them to players who got a similar number of votes (Steven Adams 20 votes, Zaza 19 votes).
For all the crazy votes, 8 Celtic players got votes, but Jae Crowder and Marcus Smart were not among them.
So to me, it looks like the players didn't take this too seriously, a lot of guys just voting for their teammates, looks to work about as well as the fan vote. Though the very top still works out. Media voting looks very respectable though.