By some stroke of luck or blessing the company that I work for (day job) awarded me with a trip to the NBA All Star Weekend. So of course I had to write about it.
First of all, I didn’t get any back stage privileges or anything like that. The tickets were pretty standard (though very expensive when we looked them up – beyond my personal budget). In theory, I could have tried to apply for a media credential, but I wanted to treat it more like a fun weekend getaway with my wife. So in short, this was a fan’s perspective, not really a blogger thing. With all that preamble aside, here are my scattered thoughts on the weekend.
Indianapolis seemed like a gracious host to the events. There was signage and banners all over the city (at least close to the arenas and in the airport). You can tell that Hoosier Nation loves the sport with passion. The only problem is that it was so cold this weekend that we really had no motivation to venture outside all that much. Take that feedback for what it is worth when considering Boston potentially getting a future weekend.
From a spectator’s perspective, the highlight for the whole weekend was Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu. They handled themselves with professionalism and grace and were great ambassadors to the game. And they really made it a fun competition. Sabrina set the bar high and Steph (being an elite competitor) rose to the challenge. The NBA should take note and ramp up the WNBA participation in future years.
The Skills Challenge was pretty much a joke from start to finish. About the only thing that worked was trotting out the Pacers players in front of their home city, which at least elicited a response from the crowd. Whatever the league does next might want to keep the home team aspect.
I wasn’t overly bothered by the LED court. At times it was really fun and I could see kids enjoying it a lot. Other times it was just a distraction and it sounds like Jaylen Brown and maybe others weren’t too sure about the grip and footing.
The 3-point competition was probably the 2nd most entertaining event. It is hard to mess that up. You just let the best shooters shoot and see who wins. I’m not a huge fan of the extra ball, but I guess sponsors gotta sponsor.
I’m not going to offer a lot of original thoughts on the Dunk Contest here. I liked some of the subtle nods that Jaylen was trying to accomplish. He just didn’t necessarily execute all of them the way he wanted to. My prime example is the Dee-Brown-elbow-over-the-eyes thing. Dee’s dunk was original and difficult because he was blind for the actual dunk itself. Jaylen’s required him to see the ball to catch it and then he did the elbow on the way down after the dunk. Not as cool. But again, I liked the concept. Hats off to McClung for winning it. The release of the ball dunk was at least original (which is harder and harder to pull off now).
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We also got to go to this event called NBA Crossover, which is essentially a convention center filled with booths and displays of basketball related items. Mostly it was a way for NBA sponsors to pander directly to their target audience which meant a lot of products and services being advertised around hoops that you could shoot at for fun. Pretty fun idea for kids and families (in particular ones like me that can’t afford tickets to the game).
The All Star Game itself was pretty much what I expected. I really don’t understand much of the pearl clutching going on about it. I don’t really see any league with a competitive All-Star Game and it doesn’t really bother me that much either way. I’m sure they’ll do some kind of gimmick to try to make the players try harder. Maybe it will work, or maybe someone will get hurt and the same critics of the way things are now will complain about the changes. Ultimately it isn’t the highest on the list of things the league should worry about. But I get that this is a showcase event right after the Super Bowl and the league is trying to gain traction with casual fans.
As an aside, I think it is fundamentally interesting that the league is starting to struggle with ratings (viewership of actual live games), but the popularity is as high as ever. The game is just being consumed in different ways, either by YouTube clips, clips on the league’s own app, video games, or even just debated and discussed on blogs like this or podcasts and the like. I don’t know what that means for the future of the game (either good or bad). But it is a fascinating trend.
By the way, I can confirm that Shaq is legitimately funny. We were walking past the TNT desk display where he was sitting between spots. Of course a large group of people stopped and took out their phones to get a picture of him. He looks over slowly, deadpans, looks away, then pulls out his own phone and starts taking a meta picture of people taking pictures of him. Hilarious. At some point a woman in the crowd yelled out, “I love you, Shaq!” and of course he yelled out, “I love you, too!”
And that was the NBA All-Star Weekend in a nutshell. The NBA and their fans got a chance to tell each other how much they love each other. Some of it was contrived, some of it really resonated, but all of it was about the love of the game. So for me, the weekend was a success and I’m glad I got this once in a lifetime opportunity to experience it.
