This year's All-Star game features a new wrinkle. In a bid to make an increasingly uncompetitive game matter more to the players involved, the All-Star game will no longer be strictly East vs West with entrants determined by fanvoting. Instead, the approach is a bit more diverse.

The team captains for each team will be divided by conference,automatically determined to be the leading vote-getters from each conference. But while the fans still vote on the other eight Conference starters (who still nevertheless go into the draft pool for the captains to choose from), their vote counts only for 50% of the total weighting in the final determination; 25% of the voting goes to media members, and 25% goes to NBA players themselves. The final tally is therefore weighted across all three sectors.

New York Knicks forward Kristaps Porzingis lost one of the three starting Eastern Conference frontcourt spots to Joel Embiid precisely because of this approach. But he seems at least somewhat comfortable with his placing among his peers.

As reported by Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News, Porzingis finished one spot behind Embiid in both the media vote and the fan vote, thus ensuring he finished behind Embiid overall and still needing to be chosen as a recipient of a reserve spot, which is chosen in a vote amongst all head coaches.

However, in the player's vote, Porzingis finished ahead of Embiid. And he noticed.

"Players know," [Porzingis] said. "That's all I'm going to say."

Not being voted an All-Star starter does not make him unworthy of being one. In 40 games this season, Porzingis is averaging 23.6 points to go along with 6.9 rebounds, 2.4 blocks and 1.2 assists. Coaches will certainly vote him in as a reserve, regardless of the starting vote. Regardless, though, Porzingis feels the snub from the fans, and seems to take a lot of comfort and confidence from the player's vote.

Whether or not the team selection draft should be televised, it won't be. All that is known so far is that LeBron James and Steph Curry are the two captains, and that Embiid, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, DeMarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis and DeMar DeRozan will be the other starters. 

Those starters will be chosen as a part of the draft process, in which James and Curry will pick their teams playground-style. It does not therefore necessarily follow that the players picked as Conference starters will be starters on their respective teams.

Porzingis and Embiid might still end up on the same team. It might now be more fun, though, if they don't.