The first returns of fan voting for the 2026 NBA All-Star game came back on Monday and Portland Trail Blazers star Deni Avdija amassed the 7th most votes in the Western Conference, putting him firmly in the race
for his first All-Star appearance.
He is making this all-star push with averages of 25.6 points, 7.2 rebounds and 6.9 assists per game through 34 games of action.
The six names above Deni and his 606,299 votes were Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, Stephen Curry, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama and Anthony Edwards. That is some pretty elite company for Avdija to find himself in 30 games into the 2025-26 NBA season.
But what do these early voting returns actually mean? The All-Star starters are picked by a combination of the fan vote, a players poll and a media panel. The fan vote is 50% of the vote to select the starters with the players poll and media panel being 25% each.
This year’s NBA All-Star game is a new format with three teams of eight all-stars instead of the traditional two teams of twelve. Two of the teams will be made up by U.S. players and the third will be made up by international players. The top twelve players from each conference will still be selected, meaning that Avdija’s seventh in the Western Conference ranking would have him on the team still in the new format.
Now, how does this early return bode for Avdija’s chances to find himself on the final roster? Historically pretty well. Since this year the NBA has stopped breaking down vote getters by backcourt and frontcourt, looking at the seven highest vote earners per conference over the last few years paints a pretty clear picture.
Since 2018 only 10 players have been in the top 7 vote getters of their conference and gone on to miss the All-Star game roster. Four of those players — Paolo Banchero in 2025, Anthony Davis in 2023, Paul George in 2022 and Kyrie Irving in 2020 — missed the cut due to injury keeping them out for a significant period before the break.
The other six players were LaMelo Ball in 2025, Jimmy Butler in 2024, Andrew Wiggins and James Harden in 2023 and Luka Doncic and Derrick Rose in 2019.
Ignoring all context and just taking the 10 players that missed out of 112 top finishers in either conference, that gives Deni a roughly 91.1% chance of ending up making his NBA All-Star debut. When taking out those who missed the cut due to injury that raises his chances to 94.4% of making the game.
Now, that’s a whole lot of words to essentially say it’s a pretty good sign for Deni to be this high in fan voting. He has already played enough games this season that an injury may not even be enough to keep him from earning a nod.
Avdija’s incredible campaign, and massive jump from last season, has put him among the NBA’s elite and has him as the favorite to come away with the Most Improved Player award this season. If both those trends hold, it would mark the first time Portland has had an all-star since Damian Lillard in the 2022-23 season and the first time the Blazers have had an award winner since CJ McCollum took home MIP in the 2015-16 season.
The main roadblock to Avdija’s All-Star claim currently seems to be Portland’s recent freefall in the standings. After a relatively strong start to the year, the Blazers have dropped to 14-20 and sit 10th in the Western Conference. This has been largely due to injuries and Deni has been one of the brightest spots throughout, but the record and placement do hurt. Bad teams don’t tend to get All-Star love and in close decisions, team success can factor in.
But one thing is crystal clear with these early returns, the NBA has taken notice of Deni Avdija. He has cemented himself as one of the premier players in the league and has made a very strong case to represent the international players during All-Star Weekend. If he continues his current level of play throughout the voting process, he should be in line to make his first All-Star appearance.
