Russell Westbrook is among the players losing votes due to fans misspelling his name.
This past week the NBA released the list of players leading fan votes for the All-Star Game. Incredibly, Russell Westbrook was not first or second among the backcourt vote recipients. That means if the All-Star Game was tomorrow Westbrook would not be starting.
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Let’s just ruminate on that for a moment. This is the same Russell Westbrook who has already made All-Star Game history by becoming the first player to win back to back All-Star Game MVP awards. Bob Petit won in consecutive years but he shared the second MVP with Eligin Baylor.
Westbrook is also on pace to repeat a feat achieved over 50 years ago (Oscar Robertson) by averaging a regular season triple-double.
Specific players suffered more than others when it came to misspelling. Not surprisingly Giannis Antetokounmpo was the player most greatly affected by lost votes. Other players suffering from spelling errors are somewhat understandable because of the different ways to spell their first names. Dwyane Wade and Isaiah Thomas being the most obvious examples of this.
Yet the real shocker was Kyle Lowry who sat right behind Antetokounmpo for misspells of his last name. Fans were adding an unnecessary “e” to his last name.
FanSided affiliate site The Step Back addressed the Lowry issue via Chris Barnewell’s article highlighting Zach Harper’s tweet of examples:
Oh boy pic.twitter.com/olYG49XMDR
— Zach Harper (@talkhoops) January 5, 2017
Westbrook missing out:
Russell Westbrook was the other shocking misspell with fans leaving out the second “l” in his first name:
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How votes for starters get tallied:
The NBA has stated they will take these minor misspells into consideration. Something else to consider is the fan vote is only worth 50% this year. Players and media make up the other 50%. Surely, players recognize how difficult it is to average a triple-double. And media know Westbrook is doing it without being surrounded by other All-Stars.
Andrew Lynch contacted the NBA to get an idea of how the votes will be tallied. The following tweet details the NBA methodology to determine the starters from each conference:
Reached out to the NBA offices for clarification on how exactly All-Star voting will work this year, and here's what they shared: pic.twitter.com/c6U42s7Xgt
— Andrew Lynch (@AndrewLynch) January 5, 2017
How to make sure your vote counts:
An easy fix for anyone wanting to vote for any of these players and especially Russell Westbrook is to simply visit the Thunder site or our twitter @ThunderousInt and just retweet one of the many tweet with #NBAVOTE in them, like this great tweet:
⚡️The Force.
— OKC THUNDER (@okcthunder) January 9, 2017
One week left to vote for Russ to start in All-Star Game. RETWEET now to #NBAVOTE for Russell Westbrook pic.twitter.com/PHvRvdkdcD
Or use the players twitter address @russwest44 #NBAVote in a tweet, for example:
You already know that the brodie will be hyped if he gets to New Orleans!
— Mountain Dew® (@MountainDew) January 9, 2017
Show us how you'll celebrate and use @russwest44 & #NBAVote! pic.twitter.com/4OOpu9twSP
Fan voting ends at 11:59 PM, Monday, January 16th, so be sure to get your votes in and guarantee Russell Westbrook is the starting point guard for the Western Conference.
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