Why NBA All Star Voting Needs to be Adjusted

It's not a new thing that NBA All Star Voting is ruining the All Star Game rosters every season. The biggest snub of recently was Russell Westbrook. Despite averaging a triple double for the majority of the season, the fans still believed Stephen Curry was more worthy of the starting spot this year. Another one in recent history was Kobe Bryant's season last year. Not saying Bryant was not worthy of being an all star on his last season of a wonderful career he put together but when someone like Harden had numbers like 29 PPG 6.1 RPG 7.5 APG (According to Basketball-Reference) and not to mention Harden started all 82 games of the season, he probably deserved the starting spot that year over Kobe Bryant. But why is it that the NBA does not always have the best back court players starting in the All Star Game? Do they prefer having a strong 6th man when they play because the game means that much to everyone? (This was a joke, the game is never taken very seriously by both sides). It is because of the fans. As much as it is great to have these fans participate in picking who goes to the All Star Weekend, it diminishes some players spotlight that worked very hard for their spot to be a starter. So now that we know the problem what can Adam Silver do to fix this situation? Well he took a step in the right direction by making it so voting wasn’t the only way to get in the All Star Game. Members of team coaching staff and media also gets effected in. Fan vote still weighs a lot but its not the only way to get an All Star starting spot now. They implemented this rule because of Zaza Pachulia getting over 1,000,000 votes when he is just a back up center for his team. To make the all star voting system perfect is to make fan vote worth less than half of what it takes to be on the starting five. At this point with Curry making it over Westbrook we find ourselves in a situation where the voting is still a popularity contest. Curry did not have better stats than Harden or Westbrook from when the voting started to when the voting finished. So how come Curry has a starting spot in the back court? Due to the fact that Curry is one of the biggest names in the NBA currently. Which makes fans vote for him even if he was injured as we have even seen that in the past with players not playing a majority of the season and still getting votes (Kobe Bryant 2013 season). These cases make the voting just a popularity contest and the fans have too much say in who makes it currently. It is great to keep the fans involved but now it is over the top. If Adam Silver can adjust these rules we can finally make the NBA voting system perfect. Fans will still vote but the votes meaning less will benefit players like Westbrook who truly deserve the back court start because he did have the best numbers out of any NBA backcourt player let alone the Western Conference. Fans might feel discouraged and keeping the fans happy is important but making sure these players are satisfied and removing the term "snubbed" is what is even more important.