Portland Trail Blazers: Damian Lillard in top 3 in West All-Star voting

The first All-Star fan voting returns are in, and Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard is in the top three for Western Conference All-Star voting for guards.

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry is first in the Western Conference back-court, and Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic is second.

Disappointingly, CJ McCollum is just eighth so far. Though McCollum has been injured for the last week or two, it was expected that he might gain enough votes to make his first All-Star game. McCollum had started the season on a hot streak, probably his best start to the season.

When we made the case for both CJ and Dame to be voted in, we didn’t expect Ja Morant or Chris Paul to be ahead of CJ, but they have both had good seasons on winning teams.

Carmelo Anthony was also tenth in the front court voting for the West. Though he hasn’t had a great season, his cult following among NBA fans means he will always get significant amounts of votes.

NBA Insider Shams Charania shared the above graphic in a tweet. Curry having double the amount of votes that Lillard has, shows just how much bigger the Warriors market is than Portland. Doncic is also almost 400,00 thousand votes ahead of Dame, even though he has had a lesser individual year. Doncic has benefitted from the bigger Mavs market, and then his international fans too.

Dame may close the gap to 1st and 2nd spot with the amazing play we’ve seen from him in the last few weeks, and he is basically a lock for his sixth All-Star game. But sadly for McCollum, with him still missing at least another week or so, he likely won’t make his first All-Star game.