The fans vote in the starters each year for the NBA All-Star game, and the league has made it easier for them to do so this season by allowing votes via hashtags on the various social media platforms.
There is a bit of a loophole, though, and it's being exploited by people with some of the biggest follower counts around.
Retweets on Twitter count as actual votes, so when players like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwyane Wade start voting for each other, their massive amounts of followers can help skew the results. The same goes for celebrities, and Justin Bieber sent out two tweets last night casting votes for Chris Paul, which gained CP3 an additional 54,000 votes via retweeets.
At least one NBA team wasn't thrilled about this, and we think we know the reason why. The Sacramento Kings hit Bieber back, telling him he should've voted for DeMarcus Cousins, and that "it was too late to say sorry."
Cousins is on record as saying he hates the Clippers, and has said he dislikes Paul "a lot" in the past. He also pulled a teammate away from Paul once who attempted a sportsmanlike post-game handshake.
For what it's worth, Bieber's vote for Paul isn't likely to affect the results. The NBA released its latest voting returns on Thursday, and Paul trailed Russell Westbrook by more than 210,000 votes for the second starting guard spot out West.
Oh, and as for Cousins? He's currently ninth among frontcourt players, so those 79 votes the Kings got him via retweets of their reply to Bieber are unlikely to help his cause all that much.
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