The NBA All-Star Game is no longer a game.
Neither can it be called a series of games even though a round-robin tournament will take place Sunday in Los Angeles as the climax of All-Star Weekend.
The four competitions that comprise the tournament are each the equivalent of one-quarter of an actual game. So the “champion” will be determined after 48 minutes of basketball.
But whatever this spectacle is, it ain’t an All-Star Game.
It’s a gimmick – a field of two U.S. teams (one named Stars and one named Stripes) and an international team (called World). It’s the same format that was introduced last year when the players were divvied up among three broadcasters that coached the teams.
The us-against-the-world element was added this year in the latest attempt to increase interest in a largely uninteresting competition.
The old-fashioned All-Star Game, which featured two teams competing for 48 minutes like, you know, an NBA game, had featured a notorious – and unavoidable – lack of defense.
In the last real game the East and West teams combined for 397 points. While the format of the game was consistent with regular NBA games, the manner in which it was played was inconsistent with regular NBA games, which is natural when you throw together the most skilled basketball players in the world with no time to form a cohesive defensive group.
Though the traditional All-Star Game was far from perfect, what has replaced it is just another goofy exercise, not appreciably more representative of NBA basketball than the Rising Stars competition, the G-League events, the HBCU Classic, the Slam Dunk contest, the 3-point shooting competition, the Shooting Stars or the Celebrity Game featuring noted hoopsters such as Badshah, Mustard, GloRilla and Cafu.
There’s a lot to look at and listen to over the weekend and it might be entertaining. But the NBA All-Star Game – the showcase of the weekend – was always supposed to be an event that brought the best basketball players in the world together to compete within the format that cultivated their talent.
It’s appropriate that this gimmick be unleashed in the Los Angeles area. Although it will take place in the home of the Clippers in Inglewood, a dozen or so miles from the Lakers’ home in L.A., it’s still in the neighborhood where another gimmick was unveiled not too long ago.
It was the Lakers who won the inaugural NBA Cup in-season tournament two seasons ago and raised a banner recognizing that trivial accomplishment alongside the franchise’s remarkable 17 post-season championships.
Kudos to LeBron James and his teammates for being fully invested in a gimmick that was designed to breathe life into the dog days of a too-long NBA season during the climax to the more popular NFL season.
But equating a novelty to a season-long championship is nonsense.
And that brings us back to the All-Star Game.
When Commissioner Adam Silver speaks on the state of the league Saturday afternoon he undoubtedly will be asked about things such as load management that deprives fans paying exorbitant prices for tickets of seeing healthy elite players as well as the increasing appearance of teams tanking to improve their draft prospects on top of the burgeoning gambling scandal infecting the league.
These are thorny issues that require urgent attention and can’t be fixed with gimmicks.
As for the league’s attempts to increase interest in the All-Star Game, Houston Rockets forward Kevin Durant addressed it while speaking to reporters Wednesday night after his final regular-season game before making his 16th All-Star appearance.
“This format might change the game,” Durant said, “but who knows?”
This we do know: this format provides four times as many betting opportunities as the traditional format did.
And given the obsession that the NBA and its brethren have these days with their gambling partners, maybe that’s the idea.
