【Thailand】

Stop us if you've heard this one before: An American election is Thailandupended by cyber shenanigans from Eastern Europe, thus propelling an unqualified candidate to the top of the polls.

No, we're not talking about the presidential race. We're talking about Zaza Pachulia, would-be NBA All-Star.

SEE ALSO: The Warriors are officially moving to San Francisco. Hopefully it doesn't ruin everything.

The NBA released initial results Thursday for its All-Star fan vote, which helps determine starting lineups for the league's annual showcase game. The usual names were where you'd expect them to be -- LeBron James led the Eastern Conference and Kevin Durant led the Western Conference, while Kyrie Irving and Steph Curry were top vote-getters among guards.

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But wait just one damn minute here ...

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*Squints, wipes off glasses, squints again*

Peer again at the section for Western Conference frontcourt players. That's Zaza Pachulia -- decidedly-decent-but-very-far-from-great NBA center -- in second place just behind Durant, his superstar Warriors teammate.

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Durant regularly stretches the bounds of what a human being can do on a basketball court. Pachulia's game is best described as fundamentally sound and ground-bound. Kawhi Leonard and Anthony Davis, the two forwards who trail Pachulia and Durant on the list, are among the top 10 players in the entire world.

So, uh, how did we get here? The story actually starts 12 months ago, with last year's All-Star game. It leads to the NBA introducing what we'll call the "Zaza Rule" before finally arriving at Thursday's results.

Of presidents, Fugees and Vine stars

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Last season, Pachulia, who played for the Dallas Mavericks at the time, came within 15,000 votes of being selected by fans as an All-Star starter. How? The election was basically hacked.

NBA All-Star selection, up until the current season, worked like this: A fan vote, conducted on social media among other places, picked the game's starters; coaches picked the reserves.

SEE ALSO: Zaza Pachulia, John Scott and All-Star games in the age of Internet irony

Pachulia is the only current NBA player from the nation of Georgia, which sits just north of Turkey on the Black Sea. Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili implored fellow citizens to vote for Pachulia in a tweet last January. But the player's biggest boost likely came from another unexpected quarter.

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Bera Ivanishvili, a pop star from Georgia, was friends with a Vine personality named Hayes Grier. Grier had 3 million Twitter followers as of last January -- followers he mobilized in a campaign to get Pachulia elected as an All-Star starter.

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Because tweeting a player's name along with the hashtag #NBAVote is one way fans were (and still are ) able to register support for a candidate, cheerleading from a teen idol with a massive online following went a long way for Pachulia. Grier even used likes and follows to bribe his followers to vote for Zaza.

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There was more, too. None other than former Fugee and three-time Grammy winner Wyclef Jean recorded a song telling people to vote for Pachulia. (This, too, presumably happened through Ivanishvili, the Georgian pop star.)

Wyclef's pro-Zaza joint was actually a soulful little ditty. Pachulia tweeted it out last January. Take a listen.

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Such are the vagaries of All-Star selection in the age of Internet irony. But that was all last year. In a move that seemed designed to stop an entirely unqualified player from getting voted an All-Star starter by oblivious and/or cheeky internet users, the NBA changed how the game's selection process works this year.

But the people will not be silenced.

Lightning strikes twice

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The announcement from the NBA came last month."For the first time ever, NBA players and basketball media will join fans in selecting the starters" for the All-Star game, it read. The cumulative fan vote now counts for 50 percent of the decision and media and player ballots count for 25 percent apiece.

To many, this first-time event seemed at least partially motivated by Pachulia coming within 15,000 votes of starting the All-Star game last season.

Turns out it was probably a good call by the NBA. History, as they say, has a strange way of repeating itself.

When initial All-Star returns were released Thursday, there was Pachulia in line for a starting spot -- at least, based on fan votes so far. He's the consummate teammate and by all accounts a good guy -- but he's no All-Star. He averages five points and five rebounds in 17 minutes per game for Golden State, where his primary role is to set screens for and pass the ball to the team's high-octane scorers.

In fact, Pachulia's best moment this season may have come when he hit a routine jumpshot against Boston in November, then busted out an absolutely horrible celebration dance. (That dance was later set to "Pony" to create the magical Vine that is embedded below and that you absolutely must watch.)

Mysteriously, however, there's no evidence of any massive social media campaigns to vote Pachulia into the All-Star game this time around. So how did he get where is, second to only Durant among Western Conference frontcourt players? Did last season's campaign somehow carry over into this year? Or is Pachulia just more of a people's champ than the so-called experts ever gave him credit for?

Either way, Thursday's strong showing gave us many good jokes, some of which referenced another unexpected election result.

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Fan voting concludes Jan. 16. But the bad news for Zaza Nation is that this year's enfranchisement of media and players -- who, one assumes, will take the process more seriously -- makes it unlikely Pachulia actually reaches the All-Star game.

That's OK, though. No matter what happens, we'll always have this Vine.

Zaza Pachulia, ladies and gentlemen -- an All-Star in our hearts forever.