On Thursday night, prior to the Celtics’ game against the 76ers, the 10 starters for the 2018 NBA All-Star Game were announced on TNT. LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid (hiiiiiii, Rihanna!), Kyrie Irving, and DeMar DeRozan were named the starters from the Eastern Conference, while Steph Curry, James Harden, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, and DeMarcus Cousins were named the starters from the Western Conference.
Additionally, the captains for the two teams were announced. Unlike in past years, this year’s All-Star Game won’t be a straight-up East vs. West affair. Instead, one captain from each conference will pick the team they want to run with based on the pool of available participants. The captains this season will be LeBron and Curry.
Shortly after he was named a captain, Curry took to Twitter to thank NBA fans for voting him into the top slot in the West and allowing him to serve as a captain.
He also joked about who he might pick first to run with his team.
Initially, Curry suggested he might "go pick all guards and pick the shortest team possible." He also suggested he might go with the conventional top pick and take his teammate KD.
"I’m pretty sure he would be a pretty solid pick if you had the first pick," Curry said. "If LeBron doesn’t take him, I probably will for sure."
But Curry also said he might have a surprise in store for people with the first pick. Rather than going with a fellow guard or taking KD, Curry said he might opt to take Antetokounmpo first overall—and he has a really good reason for wanting to do it.
"He dunked on me last year," Curry said. "May have to get him on my team so that doesn’t happen again."
Antetokounmpo did, in fact, dunk all over Curry in the 2017Â NBA All-Star Game. Watch here.
LeBron, meanwhile, didn’t give any indication of who he might take with his top pick. He said his goal will simply be to draft "the best team I can." But he wouldn’t give any hints about who might be on his radar, and he definitely didn’t say whether or not he would select his former teammate Irving with one of his four picks.
Unfortunately, we won’t get to see any of this play out. ESPN’s The Jump host Rachel Nichols tried to launch a #TeleviseTheDraft campaign on Twitter on Thursday to force the NBA to air footage of LeBron and Curry making their respective picks.
But as of right now, the NBA doesn’t have any plans to provide fans with a glimpse of LeBron and Curry drafting their teams. Bummer. It sounds like it could get interesting.
