NBA All-Star Game 2020: TV Schedule, Live Stream for Captains, Starters Reveal

The NBA All-Star votes have all been collected.

Now, the hoops world waits to hear which 10 players made the cut and which two will serve as captains to build their rosters from a pool that will eventually be 24 players deep.

The starters and captains will be revealed Thursday night on TNT. Those 10 players will have been chosen through voting by fans, media members and players. The captains are the starters with the most fan votes from their respective conferences. The reserve spots, selected by NBA head coaches, will be unveiled Jan. 30, also on TNT.

NBA All-Star 2020: Captains, Starters Reveal

Date: Thursday, Jan. 23

Time: 7 p.m. ET

TV: TNT

Live Stream: TNT Drama

Same Captains?

Last season—the second with this captain format and first with a televised draft—fans tasked LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo with assembling the rosters. Based on the latest voting returns, each appears en route to retaining his captaincy.

James paced everyone with 4,747,887 fan votes. Antetokounmpo held the East's top spot at 4,474,107.

The Lakers man, though, isn't without competition. Soaring Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic had collected 4,598,323 votes. Anthony Davis, James' running mate in Los Angeles, saw his tally reach 4,412,619. Dethroning the King won't be easy, but the race is too close to call.

That's not the case out East, though, where Antetokounmpo is the only player with more than 3 million votes (let alone 4 million). The Toronto Raptors' Pascal Siakam was the latest silver medalist with 2,433,411 votes.

If this is Team LeBron vs. Team Giannis again, the latter may opt to alter his draft strategy. Team LeBron's roster looked better on paper last year, and that held true as it cruised to a 178-164 win.

Luka's Takeover Nearing Completion?

We aren't breaking any news here, but this is Doncic's second season in the league. That feels worth mentioning with how absurdly effective he is already.

His per-game contributions include 29.1 points, 9.7 rebounds and 9.0 assists. Throughout league history, only Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook have ever put together 29/9/9 campaigns. That Doncic is clearing these marks as a 20-year-old is silly (or scary, depending on your allegiance).

In other words, he's not being pumped up by voting shenanigans. He's already a full-fledged superstar, even though his age and trajectory somehow point to significant growth potential in the future.

"It's funny—you forget that it's his second year," Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers told reporters. "I heard someone say that yesterday, and I thought, 'Wait a minute. This is just his second year?' It feels like he's been around a long time already, which, that's a sign of greatness."

No Major Surprises?

Fan balloting can be unpredictable. Notable names receive an outpouring of support even when they aren't healthy enough to play (looking at you, sixth-place Stephen Curry). And every now and then, a non-star role player on a wildly popular team will command an inexplicable amount of votes.

A few years back, then-Golden State Warriors center Zaza Pachulia was the recipient. Now, it's scrappy Lakers guard Alex Caruso, who ranks fourth among Western Conference backcourt players despite averaging just 5.6 points over 19.1 minutes a night.

While this kind of thing often causes an uproar among fans—especially those from less celebrated smaller markets—it has no bearing on the roster makeup. To combat this phenomenon, the NBA previously moved away from autonomous fan voting and now breaks up the voting pool so that fans have a 50 percent say in the starters, while the other half is an even split between media and player votes.

Even Caruso has acknowledged his All-Star candidacy is going nowhere.

"I don't go around gloating, like, 'Yeah, I should be an All-Star,'" Caruso told reporters. "I'm a realist. I know my role, and I know what I'm doing for the team. Obviously I'm not one of the best 30 players in the league."