NBA All-Star Weekend: Does the Current System Work?

With the 2010-11 NBA All-Star Weekend approaching, the voting is nearing a halt, and as usual there are currently some controversies among the vote leaders. In this year's voting, the name Yao Ming has to be stirring up some unwanted attention.

Heading into the final days of voting, big man Yao Ming still leads the West among centers with an overwhelming 928,928 votes, with Lakers' big man Andrew Bynum trailing second with 660,576 votes, which doesn't make too much sense either.

Now, if you're not scratching your head at this point, a therapist is strongly recommended. Sadly, this is just another confirmation that the All-Star voting system needs to be changed, quickly.

One might ask how a player—who is currently out for the season—still leads the All-Star ballots?

Well, that is the outcome when a whole country (China) accounts for the majority of a players' votes. Though the fan has every right to support their favorite players 100 percent, this current situation shouldn't be happening.

With that in hand, the changes that need to be made in order for the All-Star voting system to work to "perfection," are that a big portion of the results should come from the players themselves (a universal vote from every listed NBA player), a small portion from the fans and the other majority of the voting should be accounted from NBA analysts such as Jalen Rose, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Chris Webber, Tim Legler, Ernie Johnson, etc.

I'm guessing some of you may disagree with my suggestion, but the bottom line is that there needs to be a change, and I hope that most of you agree.

Obviously nothing can be done as of now, but in the future to come, hopefully the NBA decides to re-think the current All-Star voting system and take the current situation (Yao Ming) into account because this is honestly down-right ridiculous.