No easy pickin’s here
New format for All-Star Game a riot
When the new format was announced for the NBA All-Star Game — leading vote-getters from each conference as captains, then picking sides from the entire pool — my best friend said, “Oh, this could be really bad if they make it public. It’d be like down at the park. No one wants to be the last guy picked.”
Word probably will get out somehow, but the league has said there are no plans to televise or publicize the order of picks. There was the concern that picks would be made based on friendships rather than merit and that feelings would be hurt.
But just think of the realityshow drama and gossip that would be created if it was all out in the open. Motives, real or not, would be ascribed, which would no doubt add spice to ensuing regular-season meetings.
And what if a captain didn’t pick a teammate? Ooooh, the intrigue.
The question we’re left with is simply this: If the NBA was worried about bruised feelings and appearances of pettiness (will LeBron James pick Kyrie Irving? Or vice versa), why choose this format in the first place? ever watched ESPN, or if he even has cable.
Ball was famous at first for being Lonzo Ball’s father. Now he’s famous for being famous.
At first, I found his bluster sort of entertaining and believed the problem people had with him stemmed in part from other issues we’ll leave aside for now. But I parted with him when he was entering his high school sons’ locker room at halftime of a game, taking over and trampling the authority of the coach.
That he’s continued to be seen as a worthy subject is, as Steve Kerr pointed out, a measure of our society. I can’t begin to tell you how many people who weren’t basketball fans wanted to know about then-Celtic Kris Humphries just because he’d been married to a Kardashian for a minute.
I did write a sidebar on LaVar Ball at summer league in Las Vegas to point out that he wasn’t just a normal person who turned it on for the cameras. I was engaged in a private conversation with Magic Johnson in a backstage area when Ball interrupted with a smile and a loud, “Aaaaaah,” before proceeding to talk himself up for the advice he was giving his son.
Magic shrugged it off after LaVar left.
“Yeah, I know what it is,” he said. “And I know what it is for real. It’s just building a brand and, you know, it is what it is.”
It appears, however, that it’s more than that now. And it’s a problem for Magic and the Lakers to solve.