Kyrie Irving leads all guards in first round of All-Star voting

It’s the best time of the year: time to get upset at fan voting for the NBA All-Star game. The Celtics are well-represented in the first returns, led by Kyrie Irving and his popularity:

Irving led all guards in both conferences with 910,329 votes, showing that it pays to be both insanely good at basketball and insanely fun to watch. He even beat Stephen Curry by over 100,000 votes, which is unironically quite impressive. Irving only earned less votes than Giannis Antetokounmpo (991,561) in the East and LeBron James (1,083,363) who led all vote-earners.

Outside of Irving, a few other Celtics received a hefty amount of votes. Perhaps the most puzzling result is Gordon Hayward earning 66,492 votes. This isn’t to say that Gordon Hayward is bad or anything, but he’s still recovering from his ankle spontaneously combusting a little over a year ago. He’s had some standout performances (I feel bad for you if you’re a Minnesota Timberwolves fan), but overall, he’s coming along slowly, surely and nicely.

Hayward earning more votes than Al Horford is genuinely puzzling, seeing as how Horford has played pretty solidly despite missing quite a few games due to his left knee. Horford finished up the top-10 in the East frontcourt, earning 62,288 votes. Jayson Tatum placed 5th in the same category, earning 214,622 votes. As Boston’s second-best player so far this season (you could make the argument for Marcus Morris and I wouldn’t be upset) despite his recent slump, it’s nice to see Tatum get national recognition. He’s in elite company surrounded by names such as Jimmy Butler and Blake Griffin (and soon-to-be-42-year-old Vince Carter).

Fan voting is what it is. Meanwhile in the West, rookie Luka Dončić is the second-leading vote-getter in the frontcourt behind LeBron James. Derrick Rose is sitting right behind Stephen Curry and ahead of players like James Harden and Damian Lillard because . . . well, honestly, I don’t know. He’s having a good season, but, well, yeah. In Dwyane Wade’s farewell season as a soon-to-be-38-year-old, he’s on track to start the All-Star game. That’s also something, but it’s much cooler objectively than some of these other results.

If you want to be an agent for change after seeing these, uh, interesting results, then here’s your chance:

Go fulfill your fan-triotic duty and vote. Meanwhile, I’ll be bashing my head against the wall at some of these numbers.