Kobe Bryant is lapping the field in the first officially released tally of All-Star fan votes, with 719,235 votes in his favor.
After his retirement announcement, it’s not an enormous surprise that Bryant looks to be a shoo-in for the game, as revealed by the NBA on Friday. What is surprising is that he’s leading vote-getter, and by how much – he’s over 200,000 votes ahead of Stephen Curry, who sits second with about 510,000 votes. Bryant also has over double the votes of LeBron James, who leads all Eastern Conference players with just under 358,000 votes.
That’s an enormous lead. Bryant’s margin over Curry is higher than the vote totals of three would-be starters, including Blake Griffin, who has collected over 182,000 votes in total.
Also noteworthy is the including of Kyrie Irving as the second-highest vote-getting guard in the Eastern Conference, despite the fact that he only played his first game of the season this past week.
Whatever the case, the message is clear: the fans want to see Bryant at the All-Star Game one final time, and who can blame them for that?
