Philadelphia 76ers: Fan All-Star voters did Ben Simmons dirty

In case you haven’t heard, the Philadelphia 76ers officially have one representative in the 2021 NBA All-Star game, as Joel Embiid has been named a starter for the fourth straight season.

This, obviously, is great news for the Sixers, Embiid, and the NBA as a whole, as the 7-foot-tall “Cameroonian Dream” has returned to the court a leaner, meaner, more efficient scorer thanks in no small part to a new MVP-caliber personal chef and a burning desire to make his young son Arthur proud.

Surely Embiid has turned the turbulence of 2020 into an incredibly encouraging launching pad for a massive 2021, but he isn’t the only member of the Sixers having a banner year under new head coach Doc Rivers – who very well may coach Embiid in the All-Star game if his team remains the East’s top dog.

No, Tobias Harris and Ben Simmons have also found new life in Glenn Anton Rivers, and both players deserve to have that success acknowledged and appreciated.

Keyword there?  Deserve.

All-Star fan voters showed little love towards the Philadelphia 76ers’ PG.

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In 2020, Ben Simmons finished out All-Star fan voting with the eighth-highest sum of any guard in the Eastern Conference with 824,128.

While that number wasn’t particularly impressive at the time, as Embiid had over 3.1 million votes and Simmons finished behind non-All-Stars like Jaylen Brown and Derrick Rose, it was enough when summed together with his 59 player votes (fourth) and 30 media votes (third) to get the then-23-year-old into the big game.

If Simmons wants to make it an All-Star Game 3-peat, he’ll need to get an even bigger swatch of the player and media votes, as he got absolutely bodied in the fan vote this year.

“But hey, surely it can’t be that bad, right? How many votes did Simmons get, 800,000? 700,000? 600,000?”

I wish. Unfortunately, we don’t know how many votes Simmons got, because he didn’t even finish in the top 10 in the Eastern Conference backcourt voting.

Update: He actually finished 11th, but his exact total is still unknown.

*yuck* get that graphic out of here.

Now sure, some will point to Simmons’ slow start as a reason why he may have been overlooked initially in All-Star voting. While All-Star voting didn’t officially open up until January 28th, I can see some old-school voters fully committed to the meritocracy integrity of the contest knocking Simmons for his slow start, but what excuse did fans outside of Philly have when the 6-foot-10 ‘Down Underkind’ was dropping 42 on the Jazz in his first career start at center?

If that performance didn’t show that Simmons is one of the top-25 players in the NBA, I don’t know what will.

To be fair, Tobias Harris also didn’t track within the top-10 of Eastern Conference frontcourt players, but is that particularly surprising? This is the first year Harris really entered the All-Star conversation, and even as a 10th year pro, he’s far from a household name.

Simmons, by contrast, is easily one of the 20 most well-known players in the entire NBA and, even with his polarizing reputation, is incredibly popular in Philadelphia, his home continent of Australia, and across the rest of the world.

Do some fans simply look at his average points per game and stick up their noses? Or do people not appreciate that Simmons is in the elite company of only All-Star captain LeBron James as a player who routinely guards an opposing team’s best player while spending most of his time on-ball?

Don’t believe me? Well, noted Boston homer Kevin O’Connor made an entire video on the subject and made the uncharacteristic claim that the player who shares a name with his boss’s son deserves a third-straight trip to the All-Star game.

If KOC has even come around to the unicorn-y talents of “The Fresh Prince,” why are some folks still valuing players like Russell Westbrook, Collin Sexton, and Fred VanVleet over the potential Defensive Player of the Year?

But hey, don’t feel too down about Ben Simmons’ seeming rejection by the basketball masses. He – and his Philadelphia 76ers teammate Tobias Harris – still has a chance to make it to the All-Star game since reserves are picked by NBA head coaches, and there are very few who wouldn’t want to have the 6-foot-10 defensively dominating point forward, and the Sixers could ultimately be very well represented in Atlanta once more. If anything, maybe this will serve as a little extra wind behind Simmons’ sails as he pushes headstrong into his potential as an All-NBA player. If that happens, fans won’t be able to keep the young 6-foot-10er out of the All-Star game.