Welcome to February Daily Topics at Golden State of Mind. A question (almost) every day this month to give the community a prompt to talk about!
There’s no denying it: the NBA All-Star Game isn’t quite what it used to be. Decades ago, it was a true showcase of the best basketball talent in the world, with players taking the game as seriously as a late regular-season game with playoff implications.
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Now, things have changed, and the All-Star Game — while still packed with talent — resembles a serious, competitive basketball game about as much as the NBA Street franchise does. Sure, it’s not exactly Shadeur Sanders playing flag football on the seriousness scale, but it’s not what so many of us grew up watching, either.
So how would you propose fixing the game, and the weekend (the three-point contest isn’t what it once was, either, and the slam dunk contest has fallen all the way off)?
The bigger question might be: is it even fixable at all? There’s a lot fighting against making the game competitive. The schedule is more demanding than it used to be, so players are more eager to find time to rest. Players are pushing their bodies to the limit like never before, with injuries at a high; that, combined with a better understanding of medicine and science than we used to have, means players are far less willing to put their body on the line for a game that is ultimately meaningless. And players have grown so accustomed to the game being an uncompetitive dunking exhibition, that there’s no incentive to start playing differently.
So it might not be fixable. If I were in charge, though, I’d still make a change: just go back to how it used to be. It may not be as good as it once was, but it’s not broken, either. We don’t need the shenanigans of elam endings and Team USA vs. Team World and a never-ending carousel of changing rules and concepts. Just let the 12 best players from the Western Conference play the 12 best players from the Eastern Conference, and let the players hopefully cycle back to feeling competitive about the game at some point.
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As for the dunk contest? That might be broken for good, in part because it’s nearly reached the limit of what the human body is capable of, and now it’s hard to stand out. It could use more star power, though, so if I were the commissioner, I’d negotiate in the next CBA to try to get the players association to commit to two All-Stars in the contest every year (though that’s obviously a very low priority).
What are your All-Star fixes?