Jaylen Brown is enjoying a career season for the Celtics. But is he playing well enough to give Boston two All-Star starters in Utah next month?
The NBA released its first fan voting returns for the 2023 NBA All-Star Game on Thursday, and Jayson Tatum and Brown are both healthily in the conversation. They're not at the top, however: Tatum ranks fourth among Eastern Conference forwards behind Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid, while Brown ranks fourth among East guards behind Kyrie Irving, Donovan Mitchell and James Harden.
Fans only account for 50 percent of the All-Star vote, with NBA players (25 percent) and a media panel (25 percent) accounting for the other half. But based solely on early fan voting, the current East starters would be Irving, Mitchell, Durant, Antetokounmpo and Embiid, with Brown and Tatum barely missing the cut.
Tatum and Brown both seem like locks to make the All-Star team in some capacity, and Tatum easily could vault to East starter over the next several weeks. The 24-year-old is averaging 30.8 points, 8.1 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game, and Antetokounmpo is the only East player with better odds to win NBA MVP. Tatum trails Embiid by less than 100,00 fan votes, so he certainly could slide into the third East forward spot.
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Brown, who's averaging a career-high 27.2 points per game and has scored 29 points or more in six consecutive games, has a bit more catching up to do. Irving is the clear front-runner at guard with more than 2 million votes (despite serving an eight-game suspension earlier this season after he promoted an anti-Semitic film on social media), while Mitchell is more than 600,000 votes ahead of Brown in the second guard spot.
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Fan voting is open until Jan. 21, however, so there's still plenty of time for movement. Fans can cast All-Star votes here.