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Try as they might the NBA hardly did anything to impress fans following the official announcement of the All-star starters for the 2017 NBA All-Star game set to take place at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans.

Named starters for the East were LeBron James and Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers who will be joined by Jimmy Butler of the Chicago Bulls, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks and DeMar DeRozan of the Toronto Raptors. For the Western All-Stars, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant of the Golden State Warriors made the grade. They will be joined by James Harden of the Houston Rockets, Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans and Kawhi Leonard of the San Antonio Spurs, NBA.com reported.

The manner of voting was different this year. The new system for selecting the stars included fan votes accounting for 50 percent, player votes and media votes at 25 percent apiece. The new approach was better than social media voting which could be potentially corrupted, ESPN reported. A prime example is Zaza Pachulia of the Warriors who almost got voted in despite not being an all-star.

Regardless, there were two notable names missing from the list. One is Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers. Westbrook has been averaging triple doubles and yet finished third in the voting. Embiid has been fabulous for the Sixers, technically playing in his NBA rookie season. So is the voting system flawed? The truth is that there is no perfect system and the one in place seems fair.

The problem is that there are many good players to choose from where the influence on the voting groups seem to be the difference. There were a lot of other players left out such as Dwyane Wade of the Chicago Bulls, Isaiah Thomas of the Boston Celtics or even Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers. There are still the reserves to be named so that could be the next best thing to look forward to the snubbed NBA all-star cagers.