Let your All-Star anger go

Official stance from the Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza: The watchability (or lack thereof) of Sunday's proceedings is just not an issue worth obsessing over in 2024

INDIANAPOLIS — In the NFL's Pro Bowl, actual gridiron football has been replaced by flag football and skills competitions.

In the NHL, 44 All-Stars are divided into four teams of 11 to play 3-on-3.

Those leagues have already given into the reality that the fight #thisleague stubbornly keeps waging is pretty much unwinnable at this point.

All-Star Games, in modern sport, just aren't special or even necessary. They largely don't work. Not unlike ESPN's SportsCenter as the place to go for sports highlights, they have very limited remaining utility.

In the NBA especially, today's stars are seemingly in our lives hourly. Every great play on hardwood circulates worldwide in seconds via countless social media channels. It wasn't like that in 1984 or 1994 or even 2004. We routinely see the spectacular from the world's best and it just isn't reasonable to expect the foremost basketball players on Earth to hit those heights in an exhibition game with no stakes.

Sunday's 211-186 rout for All-Star Weekend host Tyrese Haliburton and the Eastern Conference predictably unleashed a torrent of criticism and howls of outrage about the 168 combined 3-pointers attempted by East and West … and the corresponding lack of discernible defense from either team … and the fact that only three fouls were committed all night.

As usual, however, many howlers are guilty of over-romanticizing the past. How many All-Star Games have been truly memorable?

I'd say four or five tops have stuck with me through 31 seasons of NBA coverage and a long run of fervent fandom before that. The list starts with 1983 in Los Angeles ... all because of Marvin Gaye's peerless rendition of the national anthem. Rolando Blackman's "confidence, baby, CONFIDENCE" free throws to force overtime in 1987. Magic Johnson's MVP performance in Orlando in 1992 after HIV stunningly forced him into retirement at the start of the season. Michael Jordan's last All-Star Game in Atlanta in 2003 that went to double-overtime. And very selfishly speaking: Dirk Nowitzki's last All-Star Game in Charlotte in 2019 ... which delivered the bonus of the highest honor of my professional career. 

Legendary Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan is one of my heroes, but I was not "personally offended [by] this disgraceful farce taking place right now in Indy" as Bob tweeted we should be. I have come to accept that All-Star Weekend can't be like it was in 1987, when scenes like those starring Blackman felt so unique and magical because the All-Stars weren't nearly as accessible to us back then as they are now. Getting them all together in one place was truly something special.

Usually I'm as resistant to NBA change as the most renowned media curmudgeons, but I've opted to concede that All-Star Weekend in the 21st century is best viewed as a league convention. It's about the merchandise and the fashion statements and the hoopla. The standout moments we're likely to get involve Nikola Jokić pouring water on an unsuspecting Luke Dončić.

And that's OK.

Three reasons why I have adopted this position:

🏀 You think all the shouting and pleas for some semblance of All-Star defense have been loud? The (Sunday Night and) Monday Morning Quarterbacking would be 20 times louder if someone actually got hurt in the All-Star Game trying to play defense.

🏀 By Thursday or Friday, no one is going to give a rip about happened Sunday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, so why get so worked up about it? There are plenty of other things in the NBA that more urgently need fixing. Sunday night's TNT audience somehow rose 14% percent from last year's worst-of-all-time, howl-inducing debacle in Salt Lake City, so the Indy scenes must not have been as utterly disgraceful to the basketball public as described. Also: My suspicion is that ESPN would love to wrest All-Star Weekend, warts and all, from TNT's parent company (Warner Bros. Discovery) in the NBA's next media rights deal if it could. Sunday's TV audience will be recorded as the second-smallest in NBA All-Star history, but it still out-rated the NBA's No. 1 game this season (Celtics/Lakers on ABC averaged just over 5 million viewers) on Christmas Day.

🏀 Games unavoidably get away from us in the 3-Point Era. It happens all the time during the regular season and it happened Sunday night. As my pal Tom Ziller smartly noted in his Monday morning piece, Damian Lillard and Haliburton combined to drain 21 triples while the West was shooting a chilly 25-for-71 from deep as a team. Leave it to another fellow Substacker (

Justin Kubatko

) to point out that 89 games already this season have been decided by 25 or more points, representing 10.9% of all games (and a much more significant watchability problem than what happens in the All-Star Game). Kubatko's research found that to be the second-highest percentage at the All-Star break in league history, trailing only the 1969-70 season (11.1%). So much of this stems from the rampant hoisting of 3s. Which, as we all know, is the way the game is played now.

So …

I'm not going to rail against today's players about their collective lack of All-Star care factor when two of North America's four traditional major sports leagues have given in to these realities and gone away from their traditional All-Star Games completely. I have a much tougher time accepting all the regular-season blowouts. Or the fact that All-Star rosters continue to feature only 12 players per conference — same it was when the NBA was a 23-team league for much of the 1980s.

Remember: Being selected as an All-Star, much more than whatever happens on the floor, is what endures. I just can't get too worked up about the game itself and won't be surprised at all if the NBA, just like the NFL and the NHL, comes up with something else for Sunday night someday soon.

(Editor's note: I know, I know. The Monday Musings ran on Tuesday. The Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza ran on Wednesday. Let's blame the All-Star break as a whole rather than the piñata that is the All-Star Game for our off-kilter publishing schedule.)

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Numbers Game

🏀 1985

Sunday's All-Star Game in Indianapolis was the city's first since 1985. It snowed on game day that year (H/T

Bob Kravitz

for the history lesson) and it snowed Friday this past weekend. PS — I visited the former site of the Pacers' old Market Square Arena numerous times during All-Star Weekend because it is now home to an apartment complex with a Whole Foods Market and my go-to Indy coffee spot (Tinker Coffee).

🏀 1977

Market Square Arena had the distinction of hosting Elvis Presley's final concert (June 26, 1977) just weeks before his death.

🏀 3

Rest assured that I did hit the over discussed in this section last week by making it to the famed St. Elmo Steak House three times during my five days and four nights in Indianapolis.

🏀 3

San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama is averaging 20.5 points, 10.0 rebounds and 3.2 blocks per game this season. Professor Kubatko reports that Wemby is just the third rookie in league history to be averaging at least 20 points, 10 rebounds and 3 blocked shots at the All-Star break, joining David Robinson (1989-90) and Shaquille O'Neal (1992-93).

🏀 1973-74

Important reminder: The NBA did not begin tracking blocked shots until 1973-74, so rookies before that (namely Wilt Chamberlain) are prevented from appearing on this list.

🏀 28.4

Wembanyama has logged just 28.4 minutes per game as a rookie and no qualified player — rookie or otherwise — has averaged 20/10/3 at the break playing so few minutes according to

Justin Kubatko

.

🏀 2009

Handy reminder from fellow Substacker

Madeline Hill

: The NBA's last Rookie of the Year to go on to win MVP honors was Derrick Rose back in 2009.

🏀 1977 (again)

When Deni Avdija amassed 43 points and 15 rebounds in the Wizards' final game before the All-Star break, he became the first Washington player to reach those totals in one game since Elvin Hayes in March 1977 (47 points and 20 rebounds) according to Basketball Reference.

🏀 115.5

The NBA's composite scoring average at the All-Star break (115.5 points per game) is the league's highest since the 1969-70 season (115.7 points), per Kubatko.

🏀 19

After playing all 18 seasons of his NBA career with the Pacers, Reggie Miller is in his 19th season with TNT. A multiyear contract extension was announced for Miller during All-Star Weekend that TNT says will extend Miller's career with the network "to more than 25 years." A hint, perhaps, that TNT is confident that it will continue to be a prominent part of the NBA broadcasting landscape when the league's next media rights deal is announced?

🏀 5

Minnesota's Chris Finch became the fifth current NBA head coach to guest on #thisleague UNCUT in the 13-month history of the podcast I co-host with Turner Sports' Chris Haynes, joining Mike Brown (Kings), Darvin Ham (Lakers), Tyronn Lue (Clippers) and Jamahl Mosley (Magic).

🏀 8

The list stretches to eight when including current coaches who have appeared on my radio weekly radio show in Dallas: Jason Kidd (Mavericks), Rick Carlisle (Pacers) and Doc Rivers (Bucks). Finch, for the record, has also guested on The Saturday Stein Line.

🏀 97.1

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