The lights are off, the bags are packed, the awards have been secured and, well, at least half of the NBA is still stuck trying to go back through customs. Even with the exhibition nature of the event, though, we were still able to glean a few new things from the league’s 2016 All-Star Weekend.
The Warriors still run things
Had the weekend’s top highlight been the back and forth between Golden State teammates Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry in the final round of the Three-Point Shootout, that would have been just fine.
For years people have been calling the Shootout the best part of the All-Star Weekend, and until Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon got to defying gravity those people looked prescient.
Draymond Green joined Conan O’Brien amongst the rare few that can make Kevin Hart tolerable, and partway through Sunday’s All-Star Game Curry pulled this off while the nation’s lonely eyes looked to Kobe Bryant:
The Warriors don’t play again until Friday, and this bugs me already.
There will always be new dunks (we hope)
Dating back to prior to its 1998 cancellation, the major criticism of the NBA’s Slam Dunk Contest (once the bloviators moved past whining about the lack of future Hall of Famers in the line) was the idea that, a few decades after Dr. J dunked from the free throw line in Denver in 1976, there were no new dunks to create. Not by mere mortals, at least, and this argument was sent into hyperdrive in the first decade of this century when winners earned 50s on slams that were basically variations of things we’d seen before from Dominique Wilkins, Larry Nance, Kenny Walker, and Terence Stansbury.
The 2016 contest, with Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon leading the way, gave us something new. Yes, LaVine dunked from near the free throw line three times just as Dr. J did back in 1976 and 1984 while in Denver, but no competitor in Contest history has done as much from 15 feet as LaVine did. Yes, other competitors have used silly props before, but Aaron Gordon sat on a mascot’s head.
It’s very possible that, after heading into extra innings on Saturday night, that Gordon and LaVine have exhausted their canon, and that even the best of the NBA’s Contest participants will go back to staring at a blank canvas for hours, trying and failing to come up with something new.
It was worth it.
The trade deadline and All-Star break aren’t bedfellows, anymore
The usual batch of trade rumors trickled out as the weekend moved along, as the league waits for the first domino to drop in anticipation of what could be an over or underwhelming trade deadline this Thursday. That deadline in anticipation of what will be one of the more chaotic (and, easily, mistake-prone) offseasons in league history, and no general manager wants to be the guy that blows the first deal.
In years past, while the players worked the arenas, NBA GMs would find ways to seek each other out during the All-Star break in order to talk turkey and, sometimes, Jim Jackson or Jason Caffey. No more, as a collection of cell phones can make it so a GM can make a franchise-altering query with just a thumb and working knowledge of Dwyane Wade’s summertime cap hold. This doesn’t preclude nor encourage any level of activity on Thursday, it just makes things a little sleeker.
Sting may have had a place there
He’s an easy target because he makes himself one. Popular culture started deriding Sting as a pretentious, pompous prat a quarter-century ago, and the idea that a former Lite Reggae lead singer-turned-Lite Rock lead admonisher could find himself as anything else but incongruous (especially with no new album to promote) amongst the youngest and hippest league out there was a fanciful one.
The idea that poor, pitiful Drake was pushed to the side, though, is silly. If Drake wanted any part of the proceedings, the NBA would have given him a ferried charter from his half-court seat to the half-court stage. That goes for just about any other modern performer – if you want the gig, submit your resume.
In their wake, Sting played a professional, palatable, predictable medley of hits; as any classic rocker that has been touring since the 1970s could be relied upon to do.
The NBA has (almost literally) been tone-deaf in this area before, inviting bland veteran acts to sing over the league’s commercials or hiring pop country acts to play the same halftime show at the height of David Stern’s obsession with winning back Red State culture. Sting’s presence probably wasn’t an example of such. I doubt anyone behind the top 10 selling pop albums of 2015 was banging on the door outside the arena, Sunday, trying to be heard.
In the absence of cool, you get the guy that did this song:
This is never going to be an all-out, All-Star Game, and we’re going to have to get used to it
The idea that All-Star Games in years past featured players pushing themselves as they would in a regular season game, much less a playoff contest, is ridiculous. Yes, we had a few fantastic close games here and there, marked by killer and tenacious play down the stretch as the All-Stars collectively paused from the showy passes and realized that, oh geez, we’ve got a close game here.
By and large, though, those games were just as sloppy and only felt slower and more defensive-minded because they didn’t have as many 7-footers who could run an end to end fast break, or two-time MVP point guards that can get both elbows through the rim. It’s a faster, more athletic and far more skilled era, and as such what was once an up-tempo, no-defense, showboating affair has turned into a really, really, really fast no-defense, showboating affair.
That’s just fine. It’s a diversion on basic cable in the second week of February. It’s just fine to conclude that, even with all the talent on the floor and 196 points on the board, the majority of the play was less than entertaining at times.
What the league can’t do is respond to cable TV criticism from Feb. 15 that we’re all going to forget once the trade deadline hits, and change the format to try and impart some consequence to the proceedings. A Bud Selig-styled change won’t result in, say, Anthony Davis moving over to take a charge on LeBron James, just so that Stephen Curry and the Warriors can have home court advantage in the Finals this June.
That would be silly. This game is supposed to be silly. We hope you had fun with it.
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