During a long stretch of 82 games in the NBA season, players and fans start to lose interest. Every year for a weekend the NBA puts on five events consisting of a 3-point contest, the Dunk Contest, the Rising Star Game, the Skills Challenge and the biggest of them all– the All-star game, where the league’s best from both conferences compete in a star-studded match up. People regain interest as they tune in to see which stars make it and which stars get snubbed.

This year, though, the voting for the NBA All-star game moved from paper ballots to social media hashtag ballots giving anyone with a Twitter account the ability to vote for any player in the league. This has given undeserving players the opportunity to participate in the All-star game.

According to SBNation, a Fox Media-owned sports news website, Golden State Center Zaza Pachulia finished second in the polls for the western conference front court players.

Zaza averaged 5.8 points and 4.8 rebounds a game, absolutely nowhere near a true All-star stat sheet.

But Zaza received more votes than anyone else for the western conference front court players besides his own teammate Kevin Durant. This goes to show that the voting for the game has turned into a mess.

“The game is for both the players and the fans, but they shouldn’t be able to vote for any player in the NBA because it’s an All-star game,” said senior basketball player Jeff Bikus.

Yet, now with the ballots on social media, fans, players and the media can vote for anyone by using the hashtag #NBAVOTE followed by the player’s name.

“Though I think the game is for the fans, they shouldn’t have the power to vote on any player that puts on an NBA jersey,” said senior basketball player Andrew Silva.

Instead, the NBA should put together a list of deserving players to be voted on to participate in the game to avoid deserving players missing out, which happened to Damian Lillard, who was left out of the game last year after averaging 27 points per game and almost 7 assists, according to Basketball Reference.

Now that’s much better than Zaza’s 5.8 points.

“Guys like Paul George and Lou Williams are performing at high levels and deserve to be in the game, but who will you take out?” asked Corey Knigge, English teacher and former basketball coach.

It is hard to choose who will make it and who will get snubbed because there will always be those two or three guys who are All-star caliber but don’t match up with the other guys on the list. By making a list of 24 players from both conferences with respectable stats to give to the fans, the media and the players, the league’s best have a better chance of making the game.

If the NBA can find ways to incorporate the fans and the players into the voting process while also making sure the Zazas of the NBA don’t get in the All-star game, then they will have created a win-win situation for the fans and the deserving players.

Said Bikus, “I would really like to see the NBA take initiative in making the All-star game better for the fans and also give deserving players a chance to compete with the best of the best.”