“The one thing I would really like to see is they play hard tonight in this All-Star Game,’’ says NBA legend Larry Bird. “I think it’s very important when you have the best players in the world together, you’ve gotta compete, and you’ve gotta play hard, and you’ve gotta show the fans how good they really are.” Larry Bird made a great point before Sunday night’s All-Star game, but unfortunately, the players didn’t seem to care too much about what Larry Bird had to say about the lack of effort in the game. Other legends such as Kobe Bryant have spoken about this in the past. “Guys play harder at a pick-up game in UCLA and it ain’t billions of people watching” Said Bryant in an interview with Knuckleheads in 2019.
The lack of effort in not just the actual game, but the entire weekend is becoming concerning. Guys shooting half-court shots backward and shooting left-handed jumpers in the skills challenge, the judges are giving every dunk in the dunk contest a 46 or above and somehow allowed Jaylen Brown to get to the final round. The only exciting part about the weekend now is the 3-point contest, since it’s pretty hard to mess that up.
Karl-Anthony Towns appeared to be the only player trying during the All-Star game, dropping 50 points with eight rebounds, yet he was mostly clowned on for “trying too hard” in the game. If anything, the All-Star game would be more anticipated by fans if all the players played the way Kat did. It is more fun to watch a player try than to watch these great players just chuck up half-court heaves every possession. Luka Doncic even took a full-court shot at one point with plenty of time in the quarter left to play. The East ended up winning the game with a ludicrous score of 211-186, with a total of 168 threes attempted from both sides. Damian Lillard won MVP even though he was just shooting Logo threes the whole game. But then again, that was pretty much what every player was doing.
The Stephen Curry vs Sabrina Ionescu 3-point contest managed to live up to the hype, with Steph Curry barely edging out a 29-26 victory over Sabrina. “If you can shoot you can shoot, doesn’t matter if you’re a girl or a boy,” said Sabrina after the contest. I thought this was a great way for Sabrina to show off her talent and prove that a girl is capable of shooting from the NBA 3-point line at an elite clip, all while going toe-to-toe with the greatest shooter of all time.
It’s becoming sad to watch the All-Star weekend people used to get so excited for turn into a complete jest. Should the winning conference receive home-court advantage in the finals? Should the winning side be presented with a bonus check? It seems as though there is going to have to be some sort of big incentive for the players to start showing some effort in the All-Star game. Hopefully for the league’s sake, Adam Silver does something beneficial to help improve the weekend because it is at an all-time low right now in terms of watchability.
