Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown both ranked 4th at their positions in All Star voting

The first round of All Star fan voting has been announced and both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown feature prominently in the rankings.

Tatum is ranked 4th in the frontcourt with 2,178,330 votes while Jaylen Brown is 4th among guards with 1,032,522 votes.

The order is somewhat interesting. Durant and Giannis leading the frontcourt shouldn’t come as any surprise. Embiid edging out Tatum may be debatable, but he’s having a great season in his own right (and was an MVP candidate last year).

The guard race has a little more drama. Kyrie Irving leading the way seems like it is just a name recognition thing. I’m a little surprised that he didn’t take more of a hit in popularity with his latest off-court drama (which kept him off the court for a chunk of the start of the season).

Mitchell isn’t far behind and dropping 71 point games will only help that standing going forward. Beyond that Harden and Brown are very close together. Harden is living off his rep here and I could see Brown overtaking him for 3rd when all is said and done with the votes. While 3rd place doesn’t get you in the starting lineup, an injury or (waves vaguely into the air) whatever could keep one of the top vote getters out of the starting 5.

I think it is safe to say that both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown will be All Stars. We’ll see if they can make it into the starting 5.

Oh, and if you don’t like the way the votes are turning out, you can always cast your own votes (early and often). See the link in the tweet above.