Coming from an NBA die-hard, I don’t know how anyone watches the all-star game. I understand why lots of people with disposable income might join the party and enjoy Orlando with friends, but I honestly don’t understand how anyone sits there and watches the NBA All-Star game on their TV—from start to finish.
Ranking:
1. I’d rather watch a Chicago Bulls pre-season game where some semblance of defense and offensive symmetry is on display.
2. I’d rather watch a regular season showdown between the Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors.
3. I’d rather watch the Oscars…and I did…and why don’t we have any talented hosts/performers under the age of 40 anymore. The Super Bowl features Madonna, The Who, Prince, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty—and the Oscars have some plasticized tap dancer who was funny in City Slickers.
Sure, everyone has been bitching and ranting about the all-star game for years, so the level of play was hardly a surprise—an alley-oop on six consecutive plays and Dwight Howard taking three pointers—but it was the fact that some fans and media were actually treating this game with some element of seriousness.
Is Tom Thibodeau going to take this seriously? Is he going to run hard practices?
The guy has been around the league for 30 years and you don’t think he knows most of the players were up until 3 a.m. the night before?
It’s really a scrimmage of can-you-top-this? Which makes any player, without the quick-twitch gifts of a LeBron James or Russell Westbrook, irrelevant. I’m looking at you Kevin Love, Marc Gasol, Dirk Nowitzki and Luol Deng.
It’s a game for guys who like to goof around—right down the pipe for Howard, LeBron, Wade and Carmelo—and those who don’t, like Rose, look mostly disinterested.
It’s an NBA trade show, delivering a product that is nearly impossible to digest—at least for someone who has any basketball sensibilities. These guys aren’t competitive because they don’t need to be. Unlike the days of Oscar Robertson and Jerry West, this game didn’t amount to a significant boost in income. It’s a glorified fishing trip with the guys.
Sure, this all might appeal to the And-One audience, a subset of street ball-hip-hop diehards (HOTSAUCE!) who’ve created their own sport out of basketball. The sport is basketball’s worst stereotype: a bunch of show-offs with incredible leaping ability who care merely more for a crowd’s gasp than the score.
It’s sort of like the NBA All-Star game.
And that’s my point: If the league wants to appeal to fringe fans during this special event, aren’t they doing a disservice to their brand by trotting out their best players to do that to the game? They basically decide who will be the MVP before the game starts (based on what town they’re playing in) and cater to said player because they need to feel special—never mind the $100 million contract.
And Dwight Howard, being the only Hall-of-Fame potential center in the NBA, is so zany, they couldn’t even get him the award because he’s chucking three pointers. It was like a poorly choreographed WWE bout where the wrestlers kept stumbling over one another and just kind of gave in at the end and finally pinned someone to safeguard the storyline. Only the wrong guy was pinned.
Every pick-up player has been in these kinds of games: Players get tired and lazy, and they start hoisting shots and guys stop rebounding and defending. You can sense it within minutes that the game won’t last long because of the apathy.
But then, you have people referring to a player’s career all-star game stats as if any of it mattered. Really? I remember reading some long-winded article that kept referencing Michael Jordan’s MVP status in the All-Star game, calling him a star of stars, and wondering if the writer really ever watched any of these games.
Jordan—and as you can see with Kobe—was probably the only one who demands some semblance of competitiveness amidst the bullshit.
The NFL, which can basically sell generic mayonnaise with their label on a jar theses days, can’t even hide behind the indifference in their silly all-star game that doesn’t include contact. It’s unbearable to watch, and yet you have some humps talking about point spreads in that game. How do you predict a winner when no one wants to win?
The NBA, with a much smaller U.S. audience, has really bounced back with a new wave of young talent. But this game doesn’t do them any favors.
Contact Mike Mitchell at michaelkennethmitchell@gmail.com.
5 comments:
Interesting that the league doesn't see pass the stereotypes about how bad "the NBA is" and then puts that game out there.
Good points on all.
Just found out that this year's all-star ratings were down 13 percent from the previous year. While that may have to do with the simultaneous airing of the Oscars, it's still worth noting.
despite watching some of the game this year, i agree with everything you've said. i actually anticipate the fourth quarter of these games, when everyone tends to play serious and try to win the game. that's the only reason i'll tune in toward the end.
allow me to redirect your sentiments toward the dunk contest: if the nba had any brains, they'd cancel it immediately or somehow contractually coerce star players to participate. other than eventual winner derrick william's dunk, the entire event was beyond pathetic. having been without a tv for the past 2.5 years (grad school), i saw the contest for the first time in years out of sheer curiosity. at the end of it i was literally putting my hands over my eyes out of shame; i couldn't believe i had been suckered in to watching this crap. paul george's bright idea to turn the lights off? someone jumping over a motorcycle when only last year blake griffin jumped over the slightly higher hood of a midsize sedan (an equally dumb idea)? some other rookie blowing a dunk four times in a row and still trying the same dunk a fifth and sixth time without realizing that everyone had lost interest by the third miss, and even if he made it the anticipation had already been choked out of the crowd...again and again and again with each embarrassing miss? performance and spectacle wise--it was a complete dud. i'm not sure what else the NBA has up its sleeve for saturday night, but the contest needs a serious makeover or it needs to be retired.
A WWE match is well coordinated. Unless you have some old geyser like Hulk Hogan going out only doing leg drops. Today's players are much more athletic. And a match nowadays in the WWE rarely ends with just someone falling on someone. There are many twists and turns and close-call endings before the final pin.
Don't blindly call out the WWE as a metaphor, when the metaphor is no longer true.
I'm not sure if it was a swat at the WWE. The implication was that the NBA All-Star operates as if it were choreographed, particularly since the MVP is tabbed ahead of time.
The WWE and NBA comprises elite athletes, but that doesn't mean we have to accept the style when it's bad.
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