© Kyle Terada/Imagn
Audio By Carbonatix
The NBA is at a crossroads. Keep chipping away and trying to find an All-Star Game format that fans will keep fans interested, or get rid of the game altogether. The latter is unlikely to happen. There’s still too much money, too many eyeballs, and too much prestige to just do away with the game. But Sunday night’s four-team, first-to-40 tournament, which was touted as a format that would save the game from increasing irrelevance, did exactly the opposite.
Not only did the game not live up to the hype, it flopped in the largest way possible. Both fans and current players panned the new format as both uninteresting and entirely impractical. In total, the three-hour game broadcast featured just 34 minutes of actual basketball according to Esfandiar Baraheni of The Athletic.
Where the league turns to now is anyone’s guess. But the problem is becoming increasingly clear. The players do not care.
Not only do the players not care, but they’ve shown time and again that they have no intention of caring. Whether it’s the game itself, or the skills competitions on Saturday night, the league’s biggest stars have sent a message loud and clear: “this is simply a vacation for us.”
Heck, this year many of the league’s biggest names couldn’t be bothered to even go and watch the events on Saturday night.
There are solutions out there from a format standpoint. Team USA against an International team is one that has been thrown around a lot. The league could take a cue from the Unrivaled women’s league and organize a huge 1-on-1 tournament. That would surely get fans tuned in.
But it’s not what the players want. That would take too much effort. There would be too much risk of somebody’s ego taking a hit.
Not to be the old guy shaking their fist at a cloud, but there was a time where players would play hard in his game simply for the pride of competing. Because they wanted to win every single thing possible. It gave us legendary NBA All-Star Game performances.
That time is long gone. And it’s hard to see it every coming back, which is a bummer for both the league and its fans.