Some of the greatest athletic talents in the world were gathered together on Sunday in Las Vegas.
The only problem is ““ nobody cares.
The NBA’s 29 finest players took part in the All-Star game in an event that has become not only predictable but also breathtakingly boring. Las Vegas called it the biggest event in the city’s history. Sorry, Las Vegas, but watching people play slots is more entertaining than All-Star weekend.
Forget slots, watching fettucine sit at the all-you-can-eat buffet is more interesting.
Instead of a venue to showcase the NBA’s elite, the All-Star game is now just a competition to see who can perform the craziest jams and alley-oops.
Not that all of that isn’t fun to watch for five minutes, but watching Shaq butcher dunks and seeing no-look passes go flying into the stands just gets painful after a while.
As anyone could have predicted, the game quickly turned into the Kobe Bryant Show. He called more isolation plays for himself than Tom Hanks in “Castaway” and put up 31 points on his way to “M-V-P” chants by the Vegas natives.
The All-Stars had no interest in playing anything that remotely resembled defense. They defended their own hoop like France defends its country.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that if that’s what people want to see. The thing is people don’t want to see it. Last season’s All-Star game produced an all-time low TV rating of 4.3.
Obviously, the current format for the All-Star game is not working so let’s tinker around with it.
Here’s some suggestions to make it a worthwhile event:
1. Instead of playing the usual five-on-five format, set it up as a three-on-three tourney with the All-Stars picking their own teams. The way it is now, maybe seven of the 10 players on the court actually do anything. There’s one to lob the alley-oop, one to dunk it and one to get posterized under the hoop. A three-on-three single elimination tournament would be more fun for the fans to watch, and the players would get into it with their pride on the line.
2. Instead of having a “skills” competition, let’s play some Joes versus Pros. Randomly select a few fans from the audience and pit them against a team of pros.
This part of the weekend would get lopsided fast, so to make it even, the pros would have their choice of either playing with one arm tied behind their backs or wearing stilettos. Either way it would be entertaining. The game would still be a blowout but it would be pretty sweet to see an overweight middle-aged woman sink a trey right in Kobe Bryant’s face, then proceed to talk more trash than Gary Payton.
3. For the love of all that is good, no more dunk contests. They’ve all been done. We’ve seen the dunk-over-the-short-guy, the dunk-over-the-tall-guy and the dunk-from-long-range hundreds of times.
To replace this contest, how about a NBA shootout ““ with paintball guns. Replace the basketball court with an obstacle course and let the games begin. Imagine Yao Ming trying to outmaneuver Jason Kidd bearing down on him with a clip full of paint. If that doesn’t boost ratings, nothing will.
E-mail Feder at jfeder@media.ucla.edu if you think fettucine alfredo should always be served with two large separate spoons instead of tongs.