We’ve finally pulled out of the tailspin of one of things NBA fans love to complain about the most: All-Star weekend.
Spend enough time online and you’ll see that every event sucks, it’s not what it used to be, and it’s a negative reflection on the league and players as a whole.
Obviously, nothing is universal, so no matter how great someone thinks any event is, it’s going to be impossible to please everyone. But All-Star games have drawn an incredible amount of ire.
The All-Star game used to be just the game. The dunk contest began in 1984. The 3-point shootout was born in 1986. The skills challenge began as a way to get point guards involved in 2003.
Before all that other stuff, the game was crammed into the middle of the schedule. That 1982 game I mentioned where Larry Bird won his All-Star MVP? The Celtics had a game that Thursday, the All-Star game was Sunday, and Boston played on Tuesday.
The fact of the matter is that as the NBA grew bigger and bigger, the All-Star game grew less and less important.
Once upon a time, the All-Star game was a proving ground for players. This was the one chance where the best of the best were on the same floor at the same time, and guys could compete with one another for a sliver of the spotlight. Whether it was to raise their national profile, pick up an endorsement, or gain some sort of competitive edge, the All-Star game was a rare chance for a player to step up against his peers, in front of a big audience, and prove something.
This was an opportunity. Guys weren’t making a ton of money (Bird made $650,000 in 1982) so any prize money they won was meaningful. Jayson Tatum makes almost as much as Bird did in a week. The NBA increased the prize for the winning team to $100,000 per player. Tatum can use that to cover his technical foul bill this season, but I don’t expect him to be motivated by 0.3% of his annual salary.
The NBA is just a vastly different game in a vastly different time, and I’m getting sick of the old guard around the game romanticizing the past without context. Between the All-Star game and animosity against “load management,” the building narrative against today’s league is getting tiresome.
Things change. I’m sorry to tell everyone that there's no stopping progress and evolution. We can yell and scream and legislate whatever we want, but that doesn’t stop the earth from spinning and times from changing. Whether it’s for the better or worse is something that will be figured out over time, but no matter what, time marches forward, not backward (except for maybe in Florida).
Magic Johnson was the league’s highest-paid player in 1986 at $2.5 million. We didn’t see a seven-figure salary until Magic again in 1994. Aside from Michael Jordan’s two seasons as a $30-plus million dollar player, it took until 2001 for the league’s elite to be paid more than $20 million on a consistent basis. Kevin Garnett made that kind of money in 2000 to 2003
Garnett was on his way to an MVP season in 2004. In 2023, Grant Williams is hoping to make that kind of money to be a six or seventh man trying to break into a starting role.
And he might get it, because that's the kind of money the league generates now. Because times are different.
Tom Chambers was the league’s first unrestricted free agent in 1988. Here’s a write up about that free agency from the league’s official web site:
“Chambers was better than good. The 6-10 forward was coming off a stellar five-year stretch in Seattle in which he averaged 20.4 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists. His MVP performance in the 1987 All-Star game had put him firmly in the consciousness of NBA personnel and fans, alike.”
The All-Star game, back then, put him “firmly in the consciousness of NBA personnel and fans.” They NEEDED the All-Star game for that. They don’t now.
Today’s basketball players are being judged from their grade school days. The rankings start before these kids reach puberty, and continues into the AAU circuit, elite-level camps, high school, prep school, college, or in lieu of college -- the G League or even international professional leagues. These kids have been proving themselves since the time they learned how to spell the phrase “prove yourself.”
They have Instagram and social media presences that pushes highlights into the unending void of video after video after video. You’re more likely to find bigfoot before you find an ankle-breaking crossover undocumented by video.
Sure, there might be some level of casual fans discovering an Anthony Edwards or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but their future money was unaffected by anything they did or didn’t do this past weekend.
That's not to say there aren’t exceptions. Mac McClung put his unreal leaping ability out there for the world to see, and he’ll probably make some extra endorsement money for putting on an electric dunk contest. That's a bit different, though, because the jury is still out on what kind of actual basketball player he is. None of what I’m saying denies that there are facets of the showcase weekend that could prove helpful to someone here and there, especially in a marquee event like the dunk contest.
But the game itself is at its most meaningless. The Elam Ending, where teams in the fourth quarter need to hit a target score rather than play a full quarter, has been fun for a few years, but that's not going to change the first few quarters. And, frankly, after watching Kemba Walker’s knee deteriorate after his minutes were mismanaged in his last All-Star appearance makes me yearn for anything but competitive mid-season exhibitions.
Frankly, I don’t know why people are so hellbent on making this game competitive. I’d rather lean fully into the lack of true competition in this game and change the format before doing something like give the winning conference home court, or some other gimmick.
I’d rather change it to a halfcourt game to eliminate all the fake jogging and guys using the court as a big runway for highlight dunks. It would give big men like Nikola Jokic some relevance again. And it might just make for some fun one-on-one matchups.
Whatever it is, I’m done with all the yelling at these guys to take the game more seriously. They won’t. And they shouldn’t. People want their players to focus their energy on championships. If they want to get together for a fun weekend and maybe play a little half court pickup ball for all of us to watch, then great.
Times have changed. The league, society, and our surroundings have all changed drastically over time. I’m holding the players to today’s expectations, not yesterday’s. I don’t give a damn what Dave Bing or Harold Greer did in their day because frankly, if they played today, they’d be doing what all these guys did.
Those players of the past didn’t play like they did because they have some level of pride that doesn’t exist today. They played like that because they had to. And if you strip that context away just so you can yell at these guys today, you’re being disingenuous and doing a disservice to the game.
Evolve, or go extinct.