SORRY STAR GAME NEEDS BRAND-AID
The social media crew got a real kick out of Steph Curry lying on the court, facedown on Sunday evening, instead of attempting to block Giannis Antetokounmpo dunk. Real cute. Good for a chuckle. We understand why Curry didn’t want to play defense, because nobody gives a damn about playing hard in the All-Star Game, so why should a small guard become part of a poster?
“I have no business challenging him at the rim,” Curry said afterwards.
“I’d have done the same thing if I was him,” added Kevin Durant.
Okay, fine. So why the heck are we watching a streetball exhibition propped up as something more? There are episodes of “The Young Pope” to order on demand, or three extra hours to devote to something more entertaining.
The alley-oops off the backboard and uncontested windmill dunks were fun when they first stopped playing defense in the All-Star Game. But, like with anything else, the show turns stale when it feels like a rerun.
It’s a sad statement that the enduring memory of the last 14 AllStar Games is Dwyane Wade accidentally breaking Kobe Bryant’s nose in 2012, because it represented something different: physical play. It’s also sad that Russell Westbrook stands out because he’s not best friends with everybody.
“It’s a different generation. It’s a lot of more no touching, no roughness. It’s a lot more scoring. Guards are scoring more. And then it’s more friendly basketball, because all of them are friends,” Gary Payton told me over the weekend about the state of the league, not just the All-Star game. “So they play that way. We can’t compare our era to their era. They’ve got a new era. It is what it is. I don’t care. I don’t think about it. I played in another era. We were more rougher. We were more putting you on your butt when you go to the bucket. That’s not what’s happening. So I can’t judge that.”
It’s finally clear that something has to change with the AllStar Game, since the average final score of the last three contests suggests they went to eight overtimes (they all finished in regulation): 174 points for the winner, and 162 for the loser.
Even the Knicks’ defense was insulted.
“It was a true competition. Now it’s true entertainment,” 1978 AllStar Lionel Hollins once told me. “It’s really so much more corporate. Every sponsor has a part in it. You rent out big ballrooms and there’s food, there’s music, and you could just eat yourself to death on the weekend. Back then, it was not the big production it is now.”
The players have no incentive to win or play hard, so they follow the lead of the league and use the weekend to promote themselves as a brand. And guess what doesn’t sell sneakers? Defense. But now the weekend has reached the point of tediousness, of indifference, that the NBA sold us on a D-League player, Derrick Jones Jr., as a slam dunk contest participant.
The winners of the All-Star Game already earn $25,000 more than the loser in bonuses, and that pittance pay on the scale of current NBA contracts obviously doesn’t prompt effort (LeBron James, who GETTY arrived a day late to New Orleans, makes over $375,000 per game, and Carmelo Anthony, who would’ve preferred to go on vacation, called his All-Star callup a ‘downer’).
So what can make the All-Star Game more competitive? Baseball kindly served as the guinea pig to prove you can’t allow the result to determine homecourt advantage in the Finals. How about offering more money incentives, perhaps in the form of charity? Maybe. But then you’re rewarding these guys for not playing hard in the first place. hatever the league determines about the state of their increasingly embarrassing All-Star Game, it should understand with the following reality: As the game itself crosses the line to unwatchable, and with all noteworthy players passing up on the dunk contest, it has become nothing more than a three-day promo. One big convention that carries the same competitiveness as the Pro Bowl.
W