Trae Young third among East guards in NBA’s first All-Star fan voting returns

The NBA released their initial returns for this year’s All-Star fan voting. Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young came in third among Eastern Conference guards behind Demar DeRozan and James Harden with 862,878 votes.

Young is about 30,000 votes behind Harden, while DeRozan has built quite a lead with nearly 1.5 million votes.

Young has played at an impressive clip this season despite Atlanta’s 17-20 record, averaging 28.4 points and 9.5 assists per game for the Hawks this season. Young is currently the only player in the NBA in the top-5 in scoring and assists, and is sixth in the NBA with 6.8 free throw attempts per game.

The 71st NBA All-Star game will be held Feb. 20 in Cleveland. Young has one career All-Star appearance, which came in his second season when he started the game back in 2020. Young was not selected to the All-Star team last season despite the game being moved to Atlanta due to the pandemic.

Young and the Hawks will look to get back to winning after a rough start to this season following last season’s Eastern Conference Finals Berth. The star guard was out during the Hawks’ win over the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday, but will hopefully return for Friday’s game vs. the Los Angeles Lakers as he was listed as questionable for Wednesday’s tilt after suffering a hard hit from Jusuf Nurkic in the loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday. Young notably went for 56 points and 14 assists in that effort.

More performances like that will obviously be of help in terms of his chances at jumping up the ranks in the fan voting for All-Star.

Stay tuned.