Chris Paul, Blake Griffin off to slow start in 2017 NBA All-Star voting

Now that we’ve seen the first lot of votes for the 2017 NBA All-Star game, it’s clear the LA Clippers’ Chris Paul and Blake Griffin have some catching up to do (especially to Zaza Pachulia).

The first lot of voting for the 2017 NBA All-Star game is in the books, giving us our first glimpse of how the fans have cast their view of the league to say who’s most deserving to start and make the two teams. For the LA Clippers so far, whose most likely All-Star candidates are Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, they’re off to a fairly slow start.

As Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck pointed out with the full voting, Paul and Griffin are pretty far behind a lot of their fellow star players.

I won’t even get onto the idiocy of Zaza Pachulia sitting at second among Western Conference forwards, apparently being inferior to no one except Kevin Durant. However, when looking at the rest of the picture, it’s clear the Clippers have some catching up to do.

Chris Paul is a solid fifth place among the West’s guards, although the MVP-caliber play of James Harden and Russell Westbrook has obviously set him far behind. Recently missing seven games due to a left hamstring injury and the Clippers falling into a down spell will have surely played a part in people’s voting, too, and has him sat 120,000 votes behind fourth-place Klay Thomspon and well over 300,000 behind third-place Westbrook.

Seeing as Paul was playing like an MVP himself during the Clippers’ 14-2 start, and has still been terrific for almost the entirety of the season outside of that, whether it’s been his career-best three-point shooting, historic 20-20 game with zero turnovers, or consistent Point-God-type play. With others stealing the limelight during the Clippers’ struggles, though, it isn’t that surprising how fans have responded.

As for Griffin, who’s been out since December 20th to have surgery on his right knee (not expected to return till late January), it’s also fairly expected that his All-Star votes were going to take a hit. That was always going to be likely after the respect for his exceptional talent was tarnished by his injury-ridden, team-staff-punching season last year.

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Unfortunately, despite having such a stellar start this season and playing his best basketball yet, it seems as though the injuries are being reflected in the votes. And that’s fair enough if he misses significant time, but there’s obviously a chance he’ll still make the game.

With the fans only accounting for 50 percent of the vote this year and the other 50 percent being split between players and a select group of about 75 media members, there will be some more influence in ensuring that deserving players are chosen, rather than players thriving off sheer popularity, bigger fan bases (or international ones in the case of Zaza and Jeremy Lin), and past accomplishments.

This means there’s less reason to worry about Pachulia, and more reason to know that players and media members won’t be ruling Chris Paul out of the picture in the same way that thousands of casual fans might.

Next: Full Clippers player grades for the season so far

As the LA Clippers’ season progresses and the NBA All-Star votes continue to come in, we’ll keep you covered with news and analysis of everything that’s going on.