Community NBA All-Star voting: Reserves

Choose your seven All-Star reserves in each conference; just list them in the comments section below before 6 pm ET Thursday

Something tells me that some of you will notice the banner affixed to the top of this story and surely think to yourself: "Hey Stein. Don't you know it's not Tuesday anymore?"

Readers who are especially dialed in to the usual publishing schedule around here might even take it a step further and point out that, even before this edition of the Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza got pushed back to Wednesday, there was also no This Week In Basketball compilation published Monday.

The publisher's answer to anyone seeking explanations on any or all of the above: It's NBA Trade Season, friends.

Meaning: There is no normal or usual when we're this close to the deadline.

We're down to the final eight-ish days of Trade Season leading up to next Thursday's buzzer at 3 PM ET — which has led us to publish three different deadline-dominant stories already this week — but we haven't forgotten Part 2 of the Community All-Star Selections process that began last week when you were asked to vote for the five starters in each conference.

The ever-reliable Deven P. has tallied up the nearly 50 ballots submitted by readers of The Stein Line (and yours truly) to deliver the following starting fives we wanted to see as a collective in the East and West:

The Stein Line community's East starters:

FRONTCOURT
Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee)
Jayson Tatum (Boston)
Karl-Anthony Towns (New York)

BACKCOURT
Donovan Mitchell (Cleveland)
Jalen Brunson (New York)

The Stein Line community's West starters:

FRONTCOURT
Nikola Jokić (Denver)
Victor Wembanyama (San Antonio)
Anthony Davis (Los Angeles Lakers)

BACKCOURT
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City)
Anthony Edwards (Minnesota)

In real life, of course, TNT revealed the actual starters in each conference last Thursday, which were vastly different in the West:

So now ...

It's time for us, keeping in mind the actual starters selected, to pick seven reserves in each conference. East and West coaches turned their votes in Monday and official reserve selections will be revealed this Thursday by TNT on its NBA Tip-Off pregame show at 6:30 PM ET.

When making your picks below you will be asked to follow the same rules that the coaches do: They are asked to select three frontcourt reserves and two backcourt reserves — in specific order of preference — plus two wild cards.

I will drop my own selections in the comments section below as well before locking this file Thursday at 6 PM ET. I realize that asking for your votes today means I've left only one day for us to collect readers responses rather than two, but I'm still hoping we can get a decent turnout in terms of community votes.

PS — I'm actually quite pleased to see Stephen Curry voted in as a West starter and, in retrospect, would like to rescind my initial vote there for Anthony Edwards. All-Star Weekend is in San Francisco. Steph is the unofficial host of the whole weekend. In a close race between he and Ant, that is a worthy tiebreaker.

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Hark! Who else goes there?

I wanted to post a reminder here that, three times per week, I am narrating the introduction to standout clips from various NBA podcasts for Hark Audio.

The show is called NBA Now and you can get these quick-hitter audio bites sent directly to your phone by downloading the Hark app.

Also: Sign up via email at the link embedded in this sentence to get Harklists direct to your Inbox.

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And finally …

Rather than Numbers Game today, I wanted to share some links to various stories and podcasts from recent days since I didn't get a chance to do so in a Monday TWIB compilation.

The NBA Trade Season latest on Jimmy Butler and De'Aaron Fox:

And the latest on Brandon Ingram:

My recent podcast appearance on the ALLNBA show with Adam Mares:

And my (Substack) Note of the Week: