ALL STARS: Kyrie Irving and Spencer Dinwiddie sit 2nd and 10th among East guards.

The first returns of NBA All-Star voting are out and two Nets are in contention for a starting spot.

Kyrie Irving (2nd) and Spencer Dinwiddie (10th) both showed up in the top-ten among East guards, garnering 432,481 and 94,618 votes, respectively.

The leading vote getters in each conference have an international flair, with Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece) and Dallas’ Luka Doncic (Slovenia) holding the lead in their respective conferences.

When the voting update was released, there was typical outrage among NBA fans with after some undeserving names accumulating votes. Votes for Tacko Fall (6th), Alex Caruso (8th), Carmelo Anthony (8th), Dwight Howard (10th, and even those for injured stars like Steph Curry (4th) and Kyrie Irving (2nd) were rightfully questioned.

Don’t worry about keeping integrity of the all-important All-Star Game! The NBA has imposed their own sort of ‘checks and balances’ to prevent any blatantly underserving candidates from eventually starting.

In addition to the fan vote (50 percent), there’s a player vote (25 percent) and media vote (25 percent) that goes into determining the starters. From there, the positional group (back-court/front-court) ranking for players from each voting group will then be averaged together to determine a weighted score. The lowest weighted average scores per position group will start.

Therefore, despite Kyrie Irving receiving so much love from the fans, it’s probably unlikely that players and media around the league will feel the same way after seeing him on the court for only 11 games this season.

The 2020 NBA All-Star Game will take place on Sunday, February 16th in Chicago.

Stay tuned for next week’s voting update.