All-Star Fixes?
Lots of conversations about how to fix the NBA All-Star Game this week...
Following a sobering weekend in Salt Lake City, there were infinite opinions about the NBA All-Star Game. Everyone was concerned it was BROKEN. How could an event like the NBA All-Star Game continue if glorified lay-up lines lead to Jayson Tatum scoring 55 points? Scoring 160 points in 36 minutes of basketball? Shai Gilgeous-Alexander arguing afterward he’d play harder with more money on the line? Where’s the defense?! What ways are there to fix the NBA All-Star Game?
Before the buzzer sounded on Game 4, coach Tyrone Lue subbed LeBron James out of the game. The Warriors’ lead was too large, the season was minutes from ending, and James got the standing ovation his hall-of-fame career deserved. As the Warriors were about to sweep the Cavs, James was sure to dap up teammates and competitors with his left hand. Afterward, his right hand was in a soft cast. Minutes later, the most one-sided NBA Finals since 2007 -also a sweep of (a very different) LeBron James- was over. The Finals were uneventful in 2018 after it wasn’t horribly eventful in 2017. On the whole, the four-game series saw the Warriors win by a combined 60 points.
LeBron James went West after 2018, and as we’ve discussed that search for greener pastures may have been futile, and people were still very critical of the Salary Cap Spike of 2016 that allowed for Kevin Durant to join Stephen Curry and the Warriors in the first place. The Houston Rockets fans contended that Houston would have won the NBA Finals had Chris Paul been healthy (and I can emphatically say I agree… maybe on a later issue). But as for the NBA Finals? It wasn’t broken, just because it was bad. 2016 was one of the best series of all time. 2019 saw the entire country of Canada celebrate. But in 2017 and 2018, it felt like the NBA Finals, or the playoffs, might be broken.
Talk about reseeding the playoffs, and eliminating conferences, were interesting deep #NBATwitter thought experiments, but on the whole, there wasn’t much of a move in the NBA to do much. In terms of Super Team construction, 14 months after Durant and Curry beat LeBron, LeBron was in LA with Anthony Davis, and Durant was in Brooklyn with Kyrie Irving. Clearly, there weren’t too many moves to end “super teams ruining basketball.”
Following a sobering weekend in Salt Lake City, there were infinite opinions about the NBA All-Star Game. The game was bad in that it felt as entertaining as layup lines. But does that mean it’s broken?
In 2022, Steph Curry won the MVP as team LeBron won 163-160 in Cleveland, Ohio. Curry finished with 50 points in 36 minutes, made 16 of 27 threes, and was thoroughly entertaining while both Durant and James were pushing their teams. Even though Durant, Draymond Green, James Harden, and Donovan Mitchell missed the game, their replacements were guys like first-time All-Stars Dejounte Murray and LaMelo Ball. Both new guys played hard. In 2021, while the final score was a 20-point margin, the NBA reset the score each quarter and they felt competitive throug2 of the three, and the Elam ending provided a high-risk / high-reward finish. And in the 2021 game, 5 All-Stars sitting out were replaced with just three replacements. In the All-Star game most impacted by Covid, over half of the game still found a way to be competitive and entertaining. The 2020 NBA All-Star Game? An all-time classic. In Chicago, amidst all of the late Kobe Bryant homages, Kawhi Leonard, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Chris Paul duked it out in a 157-155 finish.
On the whole, the Elam Ending NBA All-Star games have been good, but because the game this year lacked even NBA All-Star level effort people want to completely tear it down and rebuild it. It couldn’t be because LeBron and Giannis -two of the most competitive guys in All-Star weekend regularly- weren’t healthy. It couldn’t be because Salt Lake City wasn’t the venue that excited the players as Chicago was. And it certainly couldn’t be because some years the games are just duds.
Much like the entire NBA Finals and Playoffs didn’t need to be torn down when the Cavs were swept in 2018, the NBA doesn’t need to make any dramatic changes to the game… yet. Could repeated behavior lead to a shift? Sure. But in a year without Durant, Giannis, James for a half, and last year’s MVP Steph Curry, it feels like an odd sample to base decisions on.
I’m not saying I enjoyed the 2023 NBA All-Star game. I think it is safe to say, decisively, that the game felt dull. But that doesn’t mean things from the weekend didn’t go well. The Dunk Contest found the secret sauce: find NBA-adjacent guys who actually really want to win the Dunk Contest. The three-point contest was won by a top-75 All Time player who went to college up the road from the gym he won it in. D.K. Metcalf dominated the Celebrity game.
Each of those are different lessons. Find good dunkers who want to win the contest, not the cash prize. Get stars in the three-point contest. Find high-end pro athletes for the Celebrity game. Always invite Guillermo.
And perhaps the most important lesson: it’s more entertaining to have G-League high-flyers in the dunk contest than on Team Giannis in the Skill Challenge.
Sure, Indianapolis for 2024 All Star Weekend and Milwaukee in 2025 aren’t huge leaps to more entertaining locations. But if the competitive players are healthy enough to play, what’s to say the Elam Ending fix wasn’t enough?
In a basketball game, with as much pride as athletes have, it doesn’t take many guys playing hard to completely flip the script. Say Giannis goes for a steal and it gets physical, Ja Morant makes a highlight reel block and it turns everyone up, or someone pulls the Kyle Lowry and attempts to draw a charge.
There was no discernible difference in 2020, when Lowry decided to start taking charges in a close game, just a few guys deciding to play hard. Maybe Salt Lake wasn’t the city that inspired that, but it wasn’t a different game or set of rules. It’s only been three years!
While we may talk in a future P.Ainstaking Basketball about fixing/altering the charge call in the NBA and high-level college basketball entirely, but you can’t argue drawing a charge is avoiding playing defense.
The bigger issue with “fixing” the All-Star game, however, may not even be the intent. Everyone’s intentions are to make the game a competitive pickup game. A USA vs. World format? Giving more money to the winners (when most money given away in competition has been given to charity)? A BUNCH of Elam quarters? Putting hosting Game 7 of the NBA Finals on the line? These all feel gimmicky and temporary, at best.
When you watch NBA players in summer workout runs with Rico Hines -a famous basketball trainer in California known for grueling workouts followed by pro vs. pro runs that produce Instagram viral clips- they’re playing hard. For free. The goal is just to make the All-Star game something like that, but with the best 24 players on Earth. In those summer runs? Less is more.