Kobe Bryant has received a sendoff into retirement he never expected – especially with All-Star voting.
Of course, fans made him a starter. They’d done so the last 17 All-Star games. That wasn’t going to change now.
But they made him the overall vote leader for the first time in three years – and did so convincingly. Kobe received 287,289 more votes than second-place Stephen Curry. That’s the second largest difference between the top two vote getters since Michael Jordan was dominating the field. (Kevin Garnett topped LeBron James by 290,317 votes in 2008.)
This final-season surge has made Kobe the first player in NBA history with 30 million career All-Star votes.
All 26 players with at least 8 million career All-Star votes:
| Player | Career All-Star votes |
| Kobe Bryant | 30,260,939 |
| Shaquille O’Neal | 23,834,598 |
| LeBron James | 23,726,274 |
| Kevin Garnett | 21,570,151 |
| Tim Duncan | 19,668,775 |
| Dwyane Wade | 18,497,921 |
| Allen Iverson | 17,808,867 |
| Vince Carter | 16,699,755 |
| Yao Ming | 15,512,453 |
| Dwight Howard | 15,398,416 |
| Michael Jordan | 15,104,506 |
| Carmelo Anthony | 14,184,030 |
| Tracy McGrady | 13,706,074 |
| Jason Kidd | 12,534,211 |
| Grant Hill | 11,932,259 |
| Steve Nash | 10,458,675 |
| Charles Barkley | 10,369,853 |
| Dirk Nowitzki | 10,326,304 |
| Hakeem Olajuwon | 9,685,533 |
| Chris Paul | 9,545,617 |
| Karl Malone | 8,974,323 |
| Scottie Pippen | 8,967,648 |
| Kevin Durant | 8,842,402 |
| Amar’e Stoudemire | 8,609,752 |
| Ray Allen | 8,320,090 |
| Magic Johnson | 8,150,450 |
Only votes of players on the NBA’s final annual leaderboard are counted.
How did Kobe get here?
He passed Shaq for the all-time lead in 2012, becoming the sixth player to close a season as the cumulative All-Star vote leader.
Here are the paths of all six, including Bob McAdoo, Julius Erving, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan:
