i know i could have piggy backed this on other threads but i'm curious about this statement alone... i have seen many times people defend yao all-star starts by saying that he wins the "american" vote or the "non-internet vote", but i'm curious if someone can find this info officially (i tried google but no help).. btw i don't care if he does or doesn't get over-the-top help from the chinese voters, i know he deserves to start this year
His allstar selection his rookie season: "In February, Yao was rewarded for his excellent play by being selected as the starting center for the Western Conference in the 2003 NBA All-Star Game in Atlanta, Georgia. Although he scored only two points and grabbed only two rebounds in 16 minutes of play, his selection proved how popular he was with fans, as he garnered more votes than established NBA stars such as Shaquille O'Neal. O'Neal, however, has cited Yao's support from Chinese fans as the reason why he receives more All-Star votes. Despite the significant backlash against Yao, no actual figures have yet been provided to prove that Chinese fans have ever been the deciding factor in All-Star voting. In fact, for the 2004 All-Star Game, the year in which Yao won the starting spot by the smallest margin in his career, he actually received around 4,000 fewer online votes than his rival, Shaquille O'Neal. Yao managed to make up for this by outvoting O'Neal in paper balloting." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yao_Ming
while this may be true, i was looking for a more mainstream reference to this fact (newspaper website, espn.com, si.com, etc)
lol yeah, wikipedia isn't exactly the best site to pull facts from since anyone can edit and create pages. Anyways, I don't think there is anywhere they shows seperated votes from internet, non-internet, ect. I believe the only votes shown are what NBA.com put out. I could be wrong though.
okay to reply to myself: i found the following http://www.nba.com/allstar2004/allstar_game/starter_040129.html look at the bottom chart... now if i can find this for other years...
for 2005 nba.com doesn't break it down http://www.nba.com/allstar2005/allstar_game/starters_050203.html#overall not 2006 http://www.nba.com/allstar2006/allstar_game/starters_060202.html
Nice find Bronxfan. Counting only paper ballots, 1. Tim Duncan 2. Vince Carter 3. Ben Wallace 4. Kevin Garnett 5. Yao Ming 6. Jermain O'Neil 7. Kobe Bryant 8. AI 9. Shaq ...and if Wikipedia is actually right, then this year was Yao's worst paper balloting year.
yeah, but i can understand that a lot of people stopped voting for him knowing that he was going to be out and started voting for amare or whoever is left out there playing center.
who else can u vote for other than yao on the west? the closest is stoudamire who is all bout dunking and feeding off nash
Wikipedia is a fairly reliable information source. And, here they are repeating something I remember reading about in the papers at the time anyway. That year, the NBA showed the difference between internet and paper votes to dispel this China-vote myth -- though for some reason facts didn't change anybody's mind. They don't release that info normally, so I wouldn't expect to see the break-out again unless there is another outcry. It could be that the Chinese vote has built for Yao over the years and that the paper-ballot love for Yao has waned. But, I doubt it.
