Vote 4 Amare, take two

Amare is doing his viral best to be voted an All-Star starter once again. (Courtesy of AmareStoudemire.com)

On the heels of last year’s successful pitch that got Suns forward Amare Stoudemire voted into the All-Star Game, Team Amare is at it again.

And he may not even need another viral marketing campaign this time around, as he leads the Lakers’ Andrew Bynum by about 150,000 votes at the “center” position after the first round of voting was released on Thursday. Maybe now Amare will be OK with being labeled as a center?

Anyway, after using cardboard cutouts of everybody from George Washington to Obama to stage a surprising come-from-behind victory over Carmelo Anthony in last year’s voting, this time around Amare enlisted the help of comedian David Spade in his bid to make his fifth straight All-Star team not counting the season he missed with knee surgery.

“I had a great time testing my acting abilities with one of the funniest guys I have met,” Amare said in a press release about working with Spade. “I think the fans are going to enjoy the series and who knows, they may see me throw in a couple of David’s suggestions into my game.”

Vote4Amare.com will once again be the homepage for everything related to the campaign. The first viral video is embedded below, and the next three in this series will go live Dec. 22, Jan. 4 and Jan. 10.

Say what you want about Amare, but his marketing team sure knows how to use the YouTube generation to its benefit after receiving over 4 million views from last year’s viral campaign.

Entering play Friday, Amare averages 19.1 points per game and a career-low 7.6 boards per game for the 15-7 Suns, whereas Bynum averages 17.9 and 9.4 for the 17-3 Lakers.

I just hope Amare doesn’t “make it big like Kramer” the next time he tries to flop when a little guy drives the lane on him ……..

The rest of the voting

Yes, we all know All-Star voting is wack. It always has been, and it always will be.

Even without Yao Ming on the ballot this year, the Chinese voters have pushed Tracy McGrady — yet to play this season — to second in the West and Aaron Brooks seventh — ahead of Chauncey Billups, Brandon Roy, Deron Williams and Manu Ginobili.

Steve Nash ranks third just under 10K votes behind T-Mac, and if Meathawk starts focusing on a “Vote for Nash” campaign with its next set of viral videos, I would expect Two Time to make up that ground in no time.

Happy anniversary

Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the J-Rich-Dudley for Bell-Diaw trade. I entitled my second-day post on the deal, “A day later and I love it even more.”

If I were to do another story, I would call it, “A year later and I love it even more.”

Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz founded ValleyoftheSuns in October 2008 and is the owner/editor emeritus of the site. He is currently working toward his MBA in sports business at San Diego State University.