Cavaliers star now an All-Star longshot after he is disrespected by fans

It turns out that playing basketball and winning games are not all that helpful to being voted an All-Star Starter.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are off to a phenomenal start, winners of 29 of their first 33 games, and have been driven in part from star performances from their best players. Yet it appears that fan support of their success is lagging well behind -- to the point that fans are essentially ignoring one Cavs star.

The NBA All-Star Game for 2024-25 will be held on February 16th, which means that voting is already underway to see who will be voted in as All-Star starters. The first batch of fan votes are in, and they come with some truly surprising results.

NBA fans placed some shockingly bad votes

The Western Conference falls mostly along expected lines, especially at the top. Nikola Jokic, Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Anthony Davis will battle for the top three slots. The backcourt competitors are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic and Stephen Curry.

In the Eastern Conference, however, things are a bit crazier. The leading vote-getter for the East backcourt is LaMelo Ball, whose 947,000 votes outpaced Donovan Mitchell, Damian Lillard and Jalen Brunson. For frontcourt players, the top two vote-getters line up with expectations: Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jayson Tatum.

The third slot is more wide-open, with the Cavaliers' Evan Mobley a strong candidate to fill that spot. Yet Mobley is nowhere to be seen at the top of the fan voting, not showing up until the 10th spot in the East frontcourt.

Karl-Anthony Towns is a reasonable choice for the third slot, one of the players who deserves to be considered alongside Mobley. He is shooting the lights out for the New York Knicks and having a genuinely excellent season.

Paolo Banchero at fourth, however, is a crime against the entire All-Star selection process. This is not a "ranking of players when fully healthy" the fans are voting on (I would still take Mobley, but that's a reasonable conversation); it's a vote on which players have been the best this year. Banchero has appeared in just five games this season. He was tremendous in those five games, yes, but that's not enough time on the court to sniff the All-Star Game, let alone be a starter. To have him fourth and Mobley 10th is pure insanity.

Jaylen Brown checking in at fifth is also a mistake, at least compared to Mobley being well behind him. Brown is certainly still receiving some of the shine from his Finals MVP award and the Celtics' championship, but he's somewhat quietly having a mediocre season. Brown scores more, yes, but needs seven more shots per game to do so.

Brown is shooting just 46.1 percent from the floor and 33.2 percent from deep. His effective field goal percentage of 52.1 is downright bad, and well behind Mobley's mark of 61.4 percent. Brown is a good defender in theory, but he rates as a negative on that end this year, while Mobley is one of the very best in the entire league. There is no question that Mobley has been a better player this season.

It is more of the same as you continue down the list. Paul George has been mediocre and injured; Jimmy Butler has been moody and injured. Joel Embiid has been tremendous when he has played, but he only has 11 appearances of his own thus far. Franz Wagner was good in an unsustainable way after Paolo Banchero was injured but only made it a few weeks before he suffered an identical injury and will be out for a few months.

Evan Mobley has without question had one of the 3-5 best seasons for an East frontcourt player this season, and most would likely slot him third on that list. Yet fans completely disagreed, going for the higher-scoring options, those playing in big cities, or those with instant name recognition. The NBA and the All-Star Game are ostensibly about the fans, but they prove again and again they don't understand the assignment -- or at least, they understand it differently.

Evan Mobley likely can't be a starter now

Fan voting is 50 percent of the vote for being an All-Star Starter. While the media (25 percent of the vote) are likely to have Mobley high, they will also have players like Towns and Embiid in the top 6, so the average won't be enough to pull Mobley up. It's always a crapshoot whom players will vote for, but it's very unlikely they will do anything but vote for the big-name players. That's a boost for Embiid and Brown and bad news for Mobley.

Once the starters are announced, NBA coaches select the All-Star reserves. Mobley will need to hope that the league's assistant coaches think more highly of his game than the fans do. If not, he could be snubbed from the game entirely despite clearly being one of the best players in the East this year.

Confirmation is still weeks away, but as of now, it appears that Mobley is being disrespected by fans so badly that he has no hope of being named an All-Star Starter.