I’m well aware of how wacky fan voting for All-Star games can get. We had Giants fans using online programs to vote Barry Bonds into the All-Star Game. There was a movement to get scrub Rory Fitzpatrick into the NHL game a few years ago. The Canadiens got four players into this year’s All-Star Game, possibly because of fervent hometown fans. Usually this stuff doesn’t really surprise me. Until now. Spurs fans (and Rockets fans for that matter), came pretty hard in the All-Star voting this year. Fans of Bruce Bowen managed to vote him third of all forwards in the Western Conference. That’s behind Tim Duncan who led all forwards far and away, and Amare Stoudemire who only beat Bowen by 70,000.
Bruce Bowen and his nearly 1.4 million votes, finished higher in the final ballot than the following players in this order: Ron Artest, Carmelo Anthony, Dirk Nowitzki, and Pau Gasol. Artest and Melo both have been injured (though they’re still better than Bowen), but Dirk and Pau are the ones that really bother me. Dirk is a former MVP who is playing good basketball again this year. Pau never won an MVP, but he’s an All-Star and a big reason why the Lakers are as good as they are. For him to be under a million votes is a joke. I’m not going to bother going position by position here, but I just want an answer: how did Bruce Bowen get voted third of all Western Conference forwards??
Related posts
More Hot Stories at larrybrownsports.comThis entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 and is filed under Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
I’m all for this. I want the voting to get much more ridiculous with people screwing the system so that
they are forced to change the system.
In the US bloggers and media love to dog the Spurs. However, worldwide they are very popular.
Defense wins championships. Apparently defense wins beaucoup votes from the global NBA
I’m not trying to dog the Spurs. Even when Bowen was on the top of his defensive game it was hard to argue he’s the third best forward in the conference, let alone this season.
I’ve been a big Spurs fan for years, but there are two things even I have to admit:
1. Robert Horry’s flagrant foul on Steve Nash when the game was basically over was cheap and unconscionable and David Stern should have not suspended two Suns players and only Horry. He gift wrapped the series for the Spurs by not correcting a wrong.
2. Under no objective criterion known to mankind is Bruce Bowen deserving of being #3 in the all star voting at forward.
I am a fan of Bruce Bowen myself, but I suspect many of these votes for Bruce may be because people couldn’t vote for Rick Astley.
Just ask Met fans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickroll#New_York_Mets