If You Don’t Like All-Star Weekend, Then You Don’t Get the NBA
Earlier this morning, my main man Shanoff absolutely nailed what makes the NBA’s All-Star Weekend special. It’s a spectacle, a chance for the league’s best players to compete as both showmen and, down the stretch, actual players (Kobe/LeBron, anyone?), and comes couched in a weekend’s worth of glitz and sideshows that point to the future. For NBA fans, it’s at once the ultimate in accessibility and, in both what events you jock and the whole social side of things, inseparable from esoteric insider-dom.↵
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↵All this depends, though, on liking the NBA. This weekend’s not going to gain any converts. The Rookie/Sophomore game isn’t for grouchy exiles or novices, unless they’re looking for a primer on the next generation. The game’s never going to “matter” like MLB’s tried to do, or more to the point, like the playoffs do. But people, basketball -- unlike football -- is a sport where this kind of “meaningless” competition can still excite fans and very seriously shape the direction of the game.↵
↵Like the Dunk Contest, for instance. I sometimes think that the NFL prides itself on what a load of crap the Pro Bowl is, because it somehow proves the integrity of football. By contrast, by virtue of having an All-Star weekend that people mark on their calendars, the NBA opens itself up to accusations of frivolity.↵
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↵This is a long way of saying that All-Star Weekend reinforces a lot of what people complain about in the NBA -- validates it, even. Maybe that's a turn-off for many sports fans; they should stay away from their television sets this weekend. For those of us who get the sport, appreciate it in its current incarnation, the Weekend's essential viewing even if the league's not doing very well right now. Even despite the recent rash of injuries, 2008-09 was one of the more compelling in recent memory.↵
↵↵When the NBA’s down, it has the All-Star Game; when it’s up, same thing. If you simply don’t “get” the league -- and yeah, there’s some demographics tied into that statement -- don’t bother with this weekend. It’s not for you. Enjoy a season awash in legitimacy, get ready for a postseason that should be competitive from beginning to end. If that fails, then you can trot out your same old complaints. But to expect All-Star Weekend to cater to you is ... well, whatever the double-opposite of “preaching to the choir” is.↵
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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