I don’t know about you all, but I really was willing to give the NBA’s new All-Star format a chance.
The game had been declining in effort, quality, and ratings for years, devolving into nothing but 40-foot heaves and alley-oops against minimal defense. So maybe a little tournament between four teams, including a squad of young guys looking to make a name for themselves, could shake things up, you know?
Unfortunately, the execution was an absolute disaster.
Here are, in no particular order, my four biggest complaints from Sunday’s All-Star Game:
1. My God, the number of ad breaks. One Reddit user’s accounting of the night had the three-hour broadcast featuring 80 minutes (!!) of commercials with 42 minutes of actual basketball (including free throws, clock stoppages etc.).
2. What was with all the random asides? Why did we spend several minutes on watching MrBeast — who, if you are not either a.) the parent or grandparent of a child under the age of 12, or b.) yourself a child under the age of 12, you may not know is the most subscribed-to creator on YouTube — host a $100,000 contest between games? Why does YouTube’s most famous man have no idea how to host said contest, to the point where Damian Lillard was trying to shoo him away and get him to talk less?
3. Speaking of asides, whose idea was it to do a giant, uncomfortable ceremony bidding farewell to TNT, complete with the “Inside the NBA” crew getting fitted with fishing gear (a retirement joke, I think, even though the show is meant to continue on ESPN next year), all in the middle of the championship game?
The championship was off to an 11-1 start for Team Shaq over Team Candace before we cut to commercial, wasted 10 minutes on whatever that nonsense was, went back to commercial, and returned to the game nearly 20 minutes after it had paused. It went on so long that Jaylen Brown, and I’m not joking, looked down the camera lens and said “get them out of here.”
4. I said no particular order, but this is absolutely my biggest: for reasons unknown, the NBA allowed Kevin Hart, a man whose comedic relevance expired when his general schtick got old sometime around 2014, to hijack the All-Star Game to an extremely uncomfortable degree.
Hart was on the microphone, with his words broadcast through the in-arena PA system — that is, the players could hear him — just openly criticizing the All-Stars. I’m sure it was supposed to be funny, but seeing as this was a basketball game and not a roast on Comedy Central, it fell spectacularly flat.
The lowlight of the entire evening came as Hart starting taking random shots at Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who looked visibly annoyed and told Hart to spare us all and “wrap it up.”
It was, even relative to recent years of the NBA All-Star Game, unwatchable.
The players share some blame in the game’s decline over the years, but after being asked over and over to take it seriously, their participation turned into a joke, so why would they treat it as anything else?
Anyway, my personal highlight of the night: With his team a point away from sealing the championship, Stephen Curry slowly walked the ball up the court, taking in the applause of a standing ovation at his home arena in San Francisco, the All-Star Game MVP in the bag and ready to close the game out, and … the referees hit him with an 8-second violation for not bringing the ball past halfcourt in time and gave the ball back to the other team.
Incredible hater behavior from the refs. Joe Mazzulla would be proud.
Okay, enough complaining. Let’s get into it.
By Gary Washburn
When opposing players are asked about the Intuit Dome, often they take deep breaths and offer a laundry list of what they admire about the NBA’s sparkling new venue. The visiting locker room is considered the league’s most spacious and accommodating, and that’s intentional.
One of Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s visions for this jewel was to make a lasting impression on players in the league, perhaps thinking if the visiting locker room is this lavish, then what about that home locker room?
It took 10 years for the Intuit Dome to transform from an idea to a reality and it’s the league’s model facility. The 915,000-square-foot arena that cost $2 billion could have an impact on the long-term residence of the Celtics.
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Each week, we’ll be asking a piece of Celtics trivia to test your knowledge on the 18-time champions.
Congratulations to Steve Markman of Needham, the first person to correctly answer last week’s question. As a refresher, we asked you to name which current NBA franchise has a winning all-time head-to-head record against the Celtics.
The answer is the San Antonio Spurs, who have an all-time record of 58-46 against Boston since joining the NBA in the 1976 merger. Every other current NBA franchise has a losing record against the Celtics, with the Timberwolves posting the worst mark at 22-47.
Boston’s best mark against any team is a 2-0 record against the Anderson Packers, an extremely short-lived outfit that played just one NBA season in 1949-50. On the opposite end are the Chicago Stags, who went 20-3 against the Celtics before acquiring the rights to Bob Cousy and promptly folding, allowing Cousy to head to Boston in the resulting dispersal draft.
I think Red Auerbach got over those losses to the Stags, considering what they gifted him in the end.
Anyway, here’s this week’s question. The Celtics’ 23 retired jersey numbers can make it tricky for new players to snag a number they want.
What is the lowest Celtics jersey number that is not either retired by the franchise or currently in use by a player?
(Answer will be as of this writing on Tuesday, Feb. 18, in case the Celtics, I don’t know, trade Jayson Tatum and suddenly free up No. 0 or something.)
Know the answer? Send us an email at [email protected], and the first person to write in with the correct answer will get a shoutout when the answer is revealed in next week’s newsletter. Good luck!
Okay, since I was very negative about the NBA All-Star Game earlier, I will be very positive about one aspect of it, even though nothing about it reflected well on the NBA.
Spurs star and car dealership inflatable waving tube man impressionist Victor Wembanyama was named to his first All-Star Game this season and decided to really dive into the experience, joining forces with San Antonio teammate Chris Paul for the “Skills Challenge” on Saturday.
Now, those of you familiar with Paul’s work over the years know that he’s a man to leverage the rulebook to his advantage, whether through drawing foul calls with his patented “rip through” move, getting a much taller teammate (Wembanyama, actually) to tie up an opponent for a jump ball, or getting opponents T’d up in a crucial moment for having their jerseys untucked.
So should we really have been surprised when a team involving Paul tried to bend the rules to win a meaningless Skills Challenge?
In case you don’t know (which, why would you?), the NBA’s Skills Challenge is the first event on All-Star Saturday night where teams of two run through a timed obstacle course involving dribbling, passing, and shooting.
But what the Spurs duo worked out was that the shooting portion didn’t actually require you to make the shots.
So when Wembanyama and Paul approached the racks with three balls apiece, they just tossed the balls in the general direction of the basket instead of actually trying to shoot, saving several precious seconds.
Was it cheating? Was it smart strategy? Was it the sort of rule-bending that Bill Belichick would have been proud of?
Anyway, funny as it was, the NBA took a rather dim view of the tactic, and the two were promptly disqualified.
Now, in their defense, Wembanyama supposedly asked several folks from the NBA if this particular strategy was allowed, and was told that it was (keep in mind, this account is coming from a very reliable source and a model citizen in Draymond Green, so we can take it as fact).
But, nope, they were out, and frankly were sort of chastised by some random NBA staffer, who then very strangely boxed out TNT reporter Allie LaForce from interviewing Wembanyama and Paul in what could’ve been a very funny TV moment.
Leave it to the NBA to take one of the only fun moments of the weekend (far funnier than anything Kevin Hart offered up, it must be said), take themselves far too seriously, and make it a little awkward instead.
Also, Mac McClung fully jumped over a car in the dunk contest, somewhat closing the wounds of a 12-year-old me that were opened when Blake Griffin “jumped over a car” in the 2011 dunk contest (but actually only jumped over the hood and disappointed us all).
So, All-Star Weekend wasn’t all bad. It was mostly bad, but not all.
After that horrid All-Star Weekend, the Celtics are mercifully back to basketball on Thursday against the 76ers (7:00 p.m., TNT).
See the full Celtics schedule here.
This story first appeared in Court Sense, a biweekly Celtics newsletter from Boston Globe Sports. Click here to join the fun.
Amin Touri can be reached at [email protected].
