A Wave of Beliebers May Have Helped Kyle Lowry Become an All-Star Starter

Against considerable odds, Kyle Lowry was named an NBA All-Star starter Thursday, per NBA.com, vanquishing a considerable voting deficit to beat out Dwyane Wade for the honor of being one of the first five Eastern Conference players on the floor at the All-Star Game.

It's a well-deserved honorific for the Toronto Raptors point guard, whose consistent play has helped his team remain firmly in the running for solid playoff seeding. Five days ago, however, the idea of Lowry starting the ASG as a first-time All-Star seemed like an impossible task.

Down a seemingly insurmountable number of votes to Wade at the week's beginning, Lowry surged ahead of the Miami Heat guard thanks to a ravenous fanbase in Toronto and, ostensibly, a public cosigning from Justin Bieber.

The pop singer tweeted out his support for Lowry on Monday, asking fans to vote for the 28-year-old to play in the ASG.

Bieber's tweet neglected to include instructions on voting and did not include the hashtag "#NBAballot" required for votes to be registered online.

Nonetheless, it appears a number of Beliebers stopped tending their shrines long enough to decipher the All-Star voting process.

LarryBrownSports.com's Steve DelVecchio pointed out Friday that following Bieber's tweet, voting for Lowry surged and by Thursday had made up the 100,000-vote advantage Wade had built over the Raptors guard.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

While we don't know for sure it was Beliebers who pushed the first-time All-Star over the top, it's difficult to see how Toronto's fanbase managed these numbers all on its own. Sometimes, you need the Colbert Bump—or in this case, the Belieber Blitz—to get things cooking.

Congrats, Lowry, and maybe send Biebs a Raptors hat to wear. If you're lucky, he'll put it on top of the leaning tower of team hats he'll have to wear to the All-Star Game.

Follow Dan on Twitter for more sports and pop culture filigree.