2025 All-Star weekend thread

[Rawahl]

The question is: why was the game with the rising stars the only entertaining?

My guess would be that the young one want to demonstrate their value to the old ones (or the ones already considered stars), while the old one took pride in showing the young ones "their place" down the ladder.

The thing is, that playing even somewhat hard brings the risk of an injury, so many players just don't try, because they don't want to take any risk with no reward.
Its not easy to find a solution, but something could be tried like this:
--> move the ASG further away from playoffs and offseason, since it makes an injury even more problematic if it impacts the playoffs
--> I liked the idea of the snubs that take the allstar accolade against the chosen one really if they manage to win, so it has to be something that impacts the players pride or the players wallets.
I would reform the whole event like this:
Every player with a max contract gets into it, along with rising stars and other players choosen with the all-star voting. You form out balanced teams (in some way), perhaps taking into account the cost of the players (with some sort of cap) and than they play against each other in a minitournament (even with a short format like this year). During their games the players can get the usual accolades (like match Mvp. team mvp and so on). This accolades, along the team performance, advanded stats and with a spice of voting on the performance of the player gets the players in the all-nba teams. And this gives a player more money from his signed contract, if he manages to get into one of the teams.
So all-nba would really be on some sort of performance. So it should not be that you get outright more money (Super-max) for the fact you got voted in, but you get the money for the actual and the next season.

[ImaBeatDatAzz]

Every year I find myself falling asleep while watching this garbage. 2019 was the last ok one.

Nothing will beat our 2016 one in tdot

[Jstock12]

Every year I find myself falling asleep while watching this garbage. 2019 was the last ok one.

Nothing will beat our 2016 one in tdot

2020 was the best in recent memory, where guys actually tried in the memory of Kobe.

[TheGeneral99]

Again my proposal is a 1 on 1 tournament that is randomly selected from the 24 all-stars, one and done winner goes on.

Games all up to 11 except the semi's and finals up to 21. Every game is half-court.

You need to give amazing incentives to get these guys going:

1st Place - $5 million
2nd Place - $2.5 million
3rd Place - $1 million
4th Place - $1 million

[TheGeneral99]

Every year I find myself falling asleep while watching this garbage. 2019 was the last ok one.

Nothing will beat our 2016 one in tdot

2020 was the best in recent memory, where guys actually tried in the memory of Kobe.

2016 had arguably the best dunk contest in NBA history and the game was pretty good, Kobe's last.

[WaltFrazier]

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[WaltFrazier]

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[Coco Costanza]

I think my biggest gripe with the NBA All-Star game is its visuals. I just find the game visually unappealing.

- I hate theatre lighting. Yes, it mostly works at MSG, but it's so dark and I think I'd rather see the crowd. One thing that baseball does well during its games (more so when the events are on during the day in warm climates) is how you see the crowd all wearing various team baseball hats and jerseys. Sometimes you'll even see old jerseys of old players worn. It really creates the vibe of people coming together to celebrate the sport. But with the NBA All-Star game, the fans become invisible.

- Can we all agree that coloured courts suck? It's such a visual eye sore. Especially when the court is dark blue, and the crowd is in the dark.

Chicago had a great court. It both felt traditional, with the warm hard wood colour, while having a specific element tied to the city with its skyline. And players actually pop against the lighter background, rather than being enveloped in a harsh dark coloured court



- One great idea that the NBA took from the MLB (which sadly, both sports dropped) was having the players wear their own team jerseys. It made for a great visual when you saw a Laker pass to Spur, for example.



It also doesn't help that players no longer wear their team warm up suits, instead opting for drab sweat shirts. And while teams have traditional just worn All-Star jerseys, they still wore those colourful suits. Again, it creates something special when you see actual rivals wearing their team colours standing side by side



- And I'm probably alone in this, but I miss the days when the game was on in the afternoon. Over time, once it moved to a later time slot, more glitz was added, and the whole thing just kind of lost its charm. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I miss how quaint the game used to feel

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[MoneyBall]

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[Dread-Eye]

Damn, I just watched the 1st quarter of the '92 game posted by Coco Costanza. That's ball.

[dTox]

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[Westside Gunn]

I didn't watch the game, but it looks like McClung's dunks and post all star game commentary on how trash it was has been brought up more than anything else.

Here is PK Subban raising some good points:

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Another meme I saw the game itself was about 35 minutes of play and hours of commercials. Why are people making this a big deal when your average NFL game is mostly replays and commercials?

Silver might have commercialized the league too much where the noise takes more focus away from the game, but it is what allows players to get paid $60,000,000 a year. When all the pride is gone, self promotion, the pregame footage "drip", podcasts become toe focus over the games itself.