NBA Fans Send Message With All-Star Starters

Some familiar faces won’t be on the floor when the 2026 NBA All-Star Game tips off in Inglewood this February.

NBA All-Star game voters had no desire for a return of the King, nor do they fear the (Slim) Reaper.

A working holiday on the NBA front yielded the 10 men set to take the floor at the tip of the 2026 NBA All-Star Game, which will be staged on Feb. 15 at Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers. While this year’s game will actually be a series of exhibitions (abiding by a newly-installed “USA vs. The World” format), five men from each conference received their formal invites.

Brian Sevald/NBAE via Getty Images

Slovenian sensation Luka Doncic (LA Lakers) earned the most votes from fans and will be accompanied by Western brethren Stephen Curry (Golden State), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City), Nikola Jokic (Denver), and Victor Wembanyama (San Antonio). Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee) and Tyrese Maxey (Philadelphia) paced the East alongside Jaylen Brown (Boston), Jalen Brunson (New York), and Cade Cunningham (Detroit).

Where Are LeBron and KD?

Normally it’s opposing defenses that lose Kevin Durant and LeBron James, but they apparently proved elusive to voters: neither future Hall-of-Famer/face of new-century basketball appeared in the debut list, a rarity on modern All-Star ledgers. This year’s game in Inglewood will be the first without either man in the starting five since 2004, when Durant was but 16 years old and James was in the midst of his fledgling arc with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It’s hard to buy into the stock of the All-Star Game (which are endangered species in all major sports for a variety of reasons) and it’s more likely than not that both Durant and James will be among the Western reserves announced in the near future. Nonetheless, it’s still intriguing to see this message from the fans, supporters who may be ready to let go of nostalgics, even for a short while, to let a new guard in.

It’s hard to see Durant and/or James being truly irked by the snub: any value a modern all-star game holds is that it remains an event for the fans by the fans. Hockey fans took that hint a while ago, voting perennial on-ice enforcer John Scott into the 2016 NHL All-Star Game despite his struggles to stay on a major roster.

Three voting groups determined the starters for the 2026 NBA All-Star Game:

Fans (50%)
NBA players (25%)
Media panel (25%)

Complete voting results are available here: https://t.co/0YQtBsIaGp

Below are the overall rankings for the top finishers in each conference. pic.twitter.com/W21e8EOvpH

— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) January 19, 2026

Such a campaign won’t be duplicated for a while, as the NHL has recently sidelined its exhibition in favor of international tils like the 4 Nations Face-Off and the Winter Olympics. Even the mighty NFL, which can turn preseason games into must-see TV, decided its own all-star game was beyond salvaging, turning the Pro Bowl into a series of events and games that wouldn’t be out of place at your local elementary school’s field day.

Even so, the NBA still manages to make its All-Star voting an event, a currency of sorts among modern headliners. Several players have gained a cult-like status on the ballot: the departing Allen Iverson, for example famously led the vote in 2010 despite playing in only 28 games.

Deni Avdija is the latest to benefit from international interest, as a surge from a campaign in his native Israel launched him to fifth in the fan vote ahead of Wembanyama, not unlike the way China and Georgia respectively showed up for Yao Ming and Zaza Pachulia (the Pachulia sect eventually led the NBA to adjust the impact of fan voting).

That makes James and Durant’s respective eighth and ninth-place postings in the fan ballot worth looking into.

The Early Snubs Could Signal the End of An Era

What’s most intriguing is that while Durant and James will have to be a little patient for their Inglewood invites, their fellow era-definer Curry got in with little issue. What’s perhaps the one thing that separates Curry from Durant and James? His eternal spot on the Warriors.

For all their accomplishments, one of the defining traits of Durant and James’ legendary careers is that they’ve worn many, many, many jerseys. It may be too late for James to steal the GOAT title from Michael Jordan in the eyes of the majority, but there’s no doubt that he and Durant likely forever top the “ring chasing” books that dominated the 2010s.

James, of course, famously “took [his] talents to South Beach” to win two titles with the Miami Heat before returning for the promised ring in Cleveland. Durant joined Curry to get a couple during the Golden heyday, taking down Cleveland teams paced by James, who returned to the Cavaliers for a 2016 championship with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in tow.

Relative rejection from the All-Star Game is perhaps a signal that fans are ready to move on from the ring chasing, evidenced by the current crop: in the fan vote, the ten men that garnered the most public adoration have eight rings between them—four alone resting on the magic fingers of Curry. Of that same group, six (Antetokounmpo, Brown, Cunningham, Curry, Jokic, Maxey) have played for only one team. Three others (Avdija, Doncic, Gilgeous-Alexander) were the products of one-sided and the outlier (Brunson) left a Western finalist to join a Manhattan project that hasn’t reached the Finals in over five decades.

All that’s to say is that fans may be over the era of ring-chasing, inching back toward a style of renewed loyalty to teams. Perhaps even the “will they, won’t they” schtick of both Durant and James is wearing thin.

Durant’s move to the Houston Rockets would have dominated the social circles for weeks not so long ago, but it was a relatively smaller blip on the offseason radar this time around. James, now repping the Los Angeles Lakers, continues to be in the center of polarizing projects: he notably scratched himself from the main event during last year’s All-Star Game and the reveal of a “23 Seasons” patch set to adorn his Laker jersey for the rest of the season drew either salutes or eyerolls with little-to-no in-between.

All that glitters is gold, and Durant and James will more than likely be among those shining come Feb. 15. But it would certainly appear that viewers have created a new mold to break.

Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags