BANG/Kurtenbach: The 2025 NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco should be the league’s last

[Allen]

Kurtenbach: The 2025 NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco should be the
league’s last
NBA All-Star Game: The league's showcase weekend cannot be saved. The
2025 All-Star weekend in San Francisco should be the league's final go.

>Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) shoots during the first
half of an NBA All-Star basketball game in Indianapolis, Sunday, Feb.
18, 2024. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
By DIETER KURTENBACH | dkurt...@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News
Group
PUBLISHED: February 19, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. | UPDATED: February 19, 2024
at 12:45 p.m.
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2024/02/19/kurtenbach-the-nba-all-star-game-is-coming-to-the-bay-next-year-it-should-be-the-last-one/


The Warriors, San Francisco, and the Bay Area will host the 2025 NBA
All-Star Game next February.

It should be the last.

No, not the last time for the Bay — the last NBA All-Star Game in any
city, town, or municipality worldwide.

This is a tradition that has reached its expiration date. That date
might have been a decade ago.

There are three main prongs to an All-Star Weekend, and each of them has
proven to be a made-for-TV waste of time.

The Rising Stars game is a nice idea that the league has jammed onto
Friday night, before anyone of serious importance arrives in town. I
don’t know a soul who has ever claimed to have watched it in an
unprofessional context.

Keeping All-Star weekend together for the kids doesn’t make any sense.

So scratch Friday.

Saturday isn’t worth the trouble, either. The only worthwhile event amid
all the skills challenges is the 3-point contest, and that has lost its
luster because every single NBA game is a 3-point contest.

Hey, NBA — we’re covered on 3s.

Plus, Steph Curry decided to supersede that event with his own
sharpshooting contest — Stephen vs. Sabrina was a better show than
whatever Damian Lillard won on Saturday. It’s also an event that would
have carried just as much interest and intrigue if it was a made-for-TV
30-minute special shot at the Warriors’ former practice facility in
Oakland with some kids as the crowd.

And would anyone care if we never did the pass-it-into-some-circles
challenge again?

The cardinal event of Saturday night is the dunk contest, which is now a
lame parade of props, unoriginal ideas, and G-Leaguers.

The ABA started the dunk contest in 1976, but on Saturday night, the
best anyone could do was dunk over Shaq. Two dunkers did that. It was
pretty meh the first time it happened.

It’s clear that after a half-century, all the possible dunks have been
done. Jaylen Brown’s high-school class project dunks were cringeworthy.
The judges were deranged. Just let Mac McClung be a YouTube star — he’d
probably make more money than what the Osceola Magic pay him.

The dunk contest peaked in Oakland in 2000. (A dunk contest I caught on
NBA TV the other day and watched from start to finish. Kenny Smith was
also awful on that broadcast.)

Vince Carter was right then: It’s over.

So scratch Saturday, too.

But what the NBA really needs to scrap the actual All-Star Game.

When was the last time it was worthwhile for anyone involved — players,
fans, the league?

It certainly wasn’t this past Sunday.

The All-Star Game has become a farce of a basketball game: guys chucking
up shots from half-court and trying stupid dunks, all while not even a
sniff of defense can be found.

Our expectations for a glorified pickup game were low, but my goodness.

The All-Star Game has all the integrity of a bunch of sixth graders when
the coach is late for practice.

Even commissioner Adam Silver couldn’t hide his disgust at the end of
the contest Sunday.

“And to the Eastern Conference All-Stars, you scored the most points…
well… congratulations,” Silver said as he unenthusiastically handed the
winner’s trophy to Giannis Antetokounmpo.

It’s understandable things have reached this nadir. The players — the
folks who have actually to do the thing — don’t want to get injured and
don’t want to expend any energy on what should be their weekend off.

Why would they try?

We’ve had a bad product for decades now, and no number of format changes
— the NBA has tried nearly everything to fix the weekend and the game —
has helped. The whole spectacle has only gotten worse.

Since next year’s game in San Francisco is already on the books, the NBA
should go through with it and tell the world, “This is it.”

Maybe that will create something worthwhile.

Probably not.

The NBA has created an “exhibition” of worth recently, though — the
in-season tournament.

The semi-finals and final of that tournament, played in Las Vegas this
past December, are the only three games on the league’s schedule on
their respective Thursdays and Saturdays.

If the NBA (foolishly) wants to keep any All-Star weekend events around
— be that the 3-point contest, the dunk contest, or even the Rising
Stars game — doing them on the Friday night between the final two rounds
of the in-season tournament could be the play. (I’m sure the G-Leaguers
will be available and the only college football that weekend is Army-Navy.)

They can also move that event from town to town, effectively rewarding
cities for building new arenas.

Getting rid of the week-long All-Star break would allow the league to
stretch its schedule to possibly remove most back-to-back games. Getting
rid of an awful entertainment product might make the NBA’s actual
product — the games — better.

Plus, the NFL already took Christmas from the NBA. It’s going to take
President’s Day weekend soon enough, anyway.

The NBA might as well have one last hurrah (or dud) in San Francisco,
concede the war to the monolith, and start building up something new in
mid-December.

At least the in-season tournament weekend would have a worthwhile
basketball game.

And that is something the All-Star Game hasn’t provided in a long, long
time.

[NFN Smith]

Allen wrote:
>
> It should be the last.
>
> No, not the last time for the Bay — the last NBA All-Star Game in any
> city, town, or municipality worldwide.
>
> This is a tradition that has reached its expiration date. That date
> might have been a decade ago.
>
> There are three main prongs to an All-Star Weekend, and each of them has
> proven to be a made-for-TV waste of time.

I'm inclined to agree.

I haven't watched an ASG in years, but I really lost interest when they
went to playground-style picking of teams. Going that way, there's
really no rooting interest for one team or the other. I noticed this
effect a few years ago when Steph and Klay were picked for opposite teams.

To me, a serious problem with the event is that it's no longer regarded
as a competition, just an event where all the celebrities (not just
basketball) show up to see and be seen, and where the rest of us can
gawk at them. Not entirely different from things like the Coachella
festival. And it's not just the NBA -- this was very much the case when
Formula One did its Las Vegas event. And the Super Bowl has been like
that for a while, but this year was notably more, between the fact that
it was hosted in Las Vegas, as well as the presence of some celebrity
girlfriend of one of the players.

I remember a story from the first year that the NBA did the three point
competition. Larry Bird walked into the locker room and demanded "who's
playing for second place?" Nothing like that now.

Ultimately, the ASG only matters if the players think it matters, and
having something to play for. Money seems not to be enough of an incentive.

Smith

[Allen]

I'm also inclined to agree, and also haven't watched an ASG or related
event in years - they've all gotten kind of boring & repetitive.

-Allen

[Robin Miller]

Allen wrote:
> I'm also inclined to agree, and also haven't watched an ASG or related
> event in years - they've all gotten kind of boring & repetitive.
>
> -Allen
>

Same here.

--Robin