The Only All-Star Chart You Need To See
I love the smell of fresh data in the morning.
Yesterday, the NBA released the results of the All-Star voting process. As usual, they published the results as not one, but four different PDF files. It’s 2025, by the way.
With this data we can get a feel for where fans and advanced analytics agree and disagree. In the interactive chart below (click if you’re reading this on email) I’ve plotted the relationship between fan voting and player impact, as measured by Estimated Plus Minus (EPM)1.
In general, better players got more fan votes. That’s what you’d expect. But as often with these types of things, it’s the outliers that are most interesting.
For example:
Ty Jerome ranks 23rd in EPM, but 262nd in fan votes received. He might be the single most underrated player in the league this season.
Jaren Jackson Jr. is 7th in EPM, but 38th in fan voting. He’s probably the best player that isn’t a household name. This seems to be a common issue among Grizzlies players as Desmond Bane also received fewer fan votes than you’d expected based on his impact.
Bronny James ranks 474th in EPM, but 67th in fan voting. I’d call him the most overrated player in the league, but he’s played less than 30 minutes in the NBA this season.
I decided to make this an interactive chart instead of a static one so that you, the reader, could have fun finding your own outliers. Enjoy.
How To Get All Star Voting Data
Here’s the R code I used to scrape the PDFs.