It’s a rare occurrence for Kentucky basketball. Two ex-Cats voted NBA All-Star starters.
The fan voting is finished and all the ballots have been counted.
Two former Kentucky basketball players were picked as starters in the 2025 NBA All-Star Game.
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns earned that honor, the league announced Thursday night. All-Star starters are selected through a process that gives 50% of the say to the fans, 25% to NBA players and 25% to select media members who cover the league.
This is the first time in seven years — and only the third time ever — that two former UK players have been picked as starters.
Gilgeous-Alexander, who played for the Cats during the 2017-18 season, led Western Conference backcourt players in the fan voting this year. The Thunder guard is also the current favorite to win the NBA MVP award — something that no former Kentucky player has ever accomplished — making him a no-brainer to be selected as an All-Star Game starter. The night before the selections were announced, Gilgeous-Alexander scored a career-high 54 points in a win over the Utah Jazz.
This is Gilgeous-Alexander’s third All-Star selection. He was also voted in as a starter last season. The others chosen as starters from the Western Conference were Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant, Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James and Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic.
Towns, who was the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA draft in 2015 after playing one season for Kentucky, was selected as an All-Star Game starter for the first time in his first season with the Knicks after being traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves last year. Towns was a four-time All-Star — and 2016 NBA Rookie of the Year — in nine seasons with the Wolves.
The other Eastern Conference starters are New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell (a former Louisville player), Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo and Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum.
Kentucky had two starters in last year’s All-Star Game, too — Gilgeous-Alexander and Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo — but Adebayo was picked for the game as a reserve and slid into the starting lineup as an injury replacement.
The last time two former UK players were voted into the game was 2018, when Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins earned that honor. (Cousins had to miss the game with an injury.) The only other such instance came in 2015, when Davis and John Wall were voted in as starters.
Davis has been selected as an All-Star starter four times (2015, 2017, 2018 and 2020) and he’s a shoo-in to be named a Western Conference reserve this year. The All-Star reserves, which are chosen by NBA coaches, will be announced Jan. 30 and could include other former UK players, with Devin Booker, De’Aaron Fox, Tyler Herro and Tyrese Maxey viewed as possibilities to grab one of the final spots.
Davis, Wall, Cousins, Gilgeous-Alexander and now Towns are the only UK players from the John Calipari era to be voted into the NBA All-Star Game as starters. Rajon Rondo was a starter in 2013, Antoine Walker — a former Kentucky teammate of new head coach Mark Pope — earned the honor in 2002, and Dan Issel was a starter in the 1977 game.
This year’s NBA All-Star Game is scheduled for Feb. 16 in San Francisco.
The format will be completely different from years past. The 24 All-Stars will be divided into three teams — with each team drafted by TNT commentators Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith — and the fourth squad will consist of the winning team from the Rising Stars game, which will be played the previous night.
The four teams will play in a mini-tournament. For each game, the winner will be the first team to reach or surpass 40 points. Those games will begin at 8 p.m. ET on TNT.
