 What's the word, y'all? NBA All-Star Weekend is dead. At least that's what the people are saying and we here to talk about that. And yeah, we talking about it basically two days later than everybody else, but I was there in Salt Lake City, I had to get home here in Chicago, so it's late, but you clicked on the video, which I appreciate. Speaking of appreciation, I know I do this way too often, but I really appreciate the love y'all show across this channel and all my other channels, cause I wouldn't be able to go to Salt Lake City and do the cool things I do if it wasn't for y'all showing love, so thank you. While we were there, we did a live show in front of an audience and I underestimated the amount of people that be watching my podcast at Utah, so if you showed up, thank you. We had a blast. We had Metal World Peace on the show. The day before that, we had Anthony Edwards. We got 15 to 20 minutes for Anthony Edwards. I'll put those links in the description. Really cool dude. Shout out to Adidas for setting that up. We also went to Media Day. I got to basically ask every NBA All-Star a question, which was really cool. Favorite moment is somebody asked Larry Marketer who's the goat and he looked at me and he pointed, he said, we know what he want me to say, but I'm not gonna say it. So shout out to Mr. Marketer for showing love. Shout out to everybody really. It was a blast and again, thank you for that. But y'all care about Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That's when the festivities will happen. That's for the NBA fan. This is where all of the greatest players in our league come together to put on a show for us and didn't live up to the hype. No, the reality is it never really does. We're gonna talk about that. Let's start off for Friday. Start off with the celebrity game. I'll be honest with you, this is not something I care about. I did this year though and I do wanna say they've changed it up quite a bit since last time I actually watched it and the reason I watched this year is because our boy Jester was in it putting on for the NBA YouTube community, I guess. I was gonna say 2K community, but it's been a long time since brothers put together some 2K content. Either way, one of the OGs we had to show our love and for the most part, it was all right. The best part of course is DK McHalf throwing down a bunch of different dunks, but it's a celebrity game. If you either care or you don't. And then Rise of Stars is always pretty fun for me. The second year in a row where they broke it up into different teams. Show some love to some G-League players in the reality. None of them really showed up crazy. I was excited to see what school had. He didn't really give us nothing too crazy, but the savior of that event was Jose Alvarado being mic'd up and doing some great stuff. So shout out to Jose. Overall Friday is like the day people get in and people don't really care too much. Saturday, when I was growing up, Saturday was the fun day. Yeah, all-star game is on Sunday, but I like to see the skills come. I like to see the 3-point shootout, the dunk contest, that was me growing up. But as I continue to get older, the Saturday got worse and worse and worse. And if it wasn't for the savior, Mac McClung, this whole all-star weekend would have been in a take. And I know some people still think it was, but if it wasn't for Mac McClung showing up and showing out, then oh man, the tone of this video will be completely, completely different. I don't know what the skills challenge. Absolutely hated it. I don't know what they were doing. I don't know why they continued to do this. I honestly do believe back in my day, they had it right. And people care. Derrick Rose, Jean-Wal, Darren Williams, or Jean-Ron, the best point guards in basketball back then was doing the skills competition in the traditional. You weave through, you throw the bounce pass, you throw the chest pass, you hit the shot. Those were, I have some really fine memories of that. Derrick Rose threw down a reverse dunk during that event back in the day. And they changed it up to make it this team thinking, it was awful. The Rickeys did the shooting competition and ended up with like three total points. The onto the Coupon brothers didn't have Yanis. So Drew Holiday was an honorary onto the Coupon. Ultimately, Team Jazz won it, which is cool. Last year, Team Cavs won it. So whatever city is in, it seems like it's working for the home city to win that award or that event. But overall, it's one that you can completely skip. And when I was growing up, it was one of my most funny events. And I think we have to have a conversation of how we could get the star players to care about things outside of the actual All Star game. Cause I mean, the dunk contest could be better. All of these things could be better. But I say that, but they care about the three point shootout. Steph Curry has been in it if it wasn't been being injured. I'm sure you probably would have been in it again. Clay Thompson, Damian Lillard finally got his. And like the star players care about the three point shootout, but they don't care about the dunk contest. It doesn't make any sense. God thought it was going to win it all. Ended up with eight total points. Kevin Hurd. Actually, the Sacramento Kings as a whole, it wasn't an amazing time for All Star weekend, but they were there, which is all that really matters. Kevin Hurd put up eight points. I don't think DN Fox scored in the actual All Star game. So bonus, there's some things, but it's the All Star game. But either way, the three point shootout did some great things. Round one, Tarris Halliburton ended up with like 30 plus points and we got Buddy Hill, Tarris and Damian Lillard and Dane finally closed it out and got his first three point shootout championship. He said he's retired from that. He just wanted to get one because that was a part of the, what did he say? Part of being an all time great shooter was getting this event and he got that. And it was fun. They always do like the extra, I think in previous years, it was Mountain Dew, Sprite or whatever. And now it was Starry, the extra three point shot. They lost their money on that one. I don't know nobody that left that event like, let's go try Starry. No, no, and nobody actually hit all three of the Starry balls or whatever. But like I said, the Star players do care about this. We at Larry marketing, we had Damian Lillard. We had some actual All Star participants in this one. But I wonder if it would be better if we gave it to the non All Star people that are elite level shooters, the Isaiah Jones of the world. And I mean, it has been like that before where people that aren't considered All Star and you're All Star talent were in it. And I mean, we saw some of that today like Buddy Hill's not considered an All Star close to it, but he's one of the best shooters. I wonder if it will be slightly more competitive. And this year it was competitive, right? I think Damian Lillard literally needed to hit the last shot to win it. So it wasn't like it was a snooze fest, but like I would be a little bit more interested if we added a guy like Isaiah Joe because we know he's one of the best shooters in basketball. And it also helps the NBA's growth to see like the role players do his thing, especially if he is an elite person at that thing. Like Julius Randall, I gotta have love for Julius Randall for even a side enough of this when he ain't had no business being in it. And the fact that he keeps showing his son anytime he does anything wrong, it kind of rubs me the wrong way, I ain't gonna lie. Either way, that should have been like a Isaiah Joe type spot. And there's other people by Isaiah Joe is the one on top of mine because they was campaigning for him. You know, okay, see, and the fans and the players were campaigning for him to get in it and he didn't get in, but instead we got Julius Randall who we all knew had close to a 0% chance of actually winning. And I think Isaiah Joe had a legitimate chance if he was in it. Either way, it was fine. What was better was the dunk contest. It was Mac McClung's all the way. He should have had a complete 50 throughout the board, but I think he got one that was like a 49 or whatever because of that and messed it up. But Mac McClung came in and he showed out. And again, I think he saved All-Star Weekend as a whole for a lot of people with me included because he was doing some things we haven't seen in some time. I know some people showed videos of like Victor Ledipo did the 540 dunk before. Mac McClung gave love to like some pro dunkers as inspiration, which is really, really cool. For the most part, it was cool. I mean, I think what makes a good dunk contest is not just the actual dunks, it's the little amount of attempts that get to the dunk. You know what I'm saying? I don't like when we get seven attempts to finally get throw dunk. Cause even if it is a crazy dunk, it kind of lost kind of his lustre. And Mac McClung, if I'm not mistaken, didn't miss a single dunk. Whatever he was going for, he executed on the first try. And I think that went a long way. I can say the same thing about trade Murphy to third. Trade Murphy was doing his thing. Very first try every single time. And they put on a good show. Jericho Sims, no comment, man, no comment. But then it gets us to Sunday. And the best thing about Sunday was the actual draft. It might have been a little bit longer than we wanted, but you know, Yannis and LeBron have great personalities behind the microphone, which is dope. We got the Nicola Yokic. I'm not going to get picked last moment. Or Yannis trying to draft Jamer Rant as a reserve. So those things are really fun. But once we get to the actual basketball, you could have missed it completely. And it would have been fine. Shout out to Tatum. He broke the record. Broke Anthony Davis' record 55 points was really dope, especially on a big day for him because they were debuting his signature shoe. It was a reason he went out there and bawled out. He wanted people to care about those shoes. But it wasn't good. And afterwards, we got people like Jalen Brown saying, that's not basketball. Or Mike Malone saying that was the worst basketball I've ever coached. And so on and so forth. If the players are saying it and the fans are saying it, something is wrong. But the reality of the situation is, when it comes to having an all-star game, it don't matter what sport it is, it's always going to be lackluster. Because even when Luca, when he was mic'd up for the two and a half minutes that he played, somebody's driving to the basket. He said, on the call, I want to injure him. Like there's injury risk whenever you suit up and you don't want anybody to get injured doing an all-star break. So because of that, you don't play hard. And because of that, you don't contest shots and all of those things. Across football, football has a terrible all-star event. They play flag football now, I'm pretty sure. Baseball does it a little bit, but it's not very extreme. It's like the major sports don't have great all-star games. And it's just the reality of the situation. Last couple of years have been really good because the E-Lim ending has worked. And in this case, the E-Lim ending didn't work because number two and number three, those quarters weren't very competitive as far as keeping it close. So when we got to the fourth quarter, Tiana said so much of a lead with the E-Lim ending. See, LeBron really didn't have a chance. But last year in Cleveland, it was close. Steph Curry went off and then LeBron James hit the last shot. And the year before that in Chicago and went down to the last couple of sessions and that's when we started to see the good defense and things like that. So if the first couple quarters don't keep it close, then we're gonna continuously see the last quarter be a snooze fest just like the first three. But let's be real. Look at the all-star starters when they were announced. Steph Curry did not play. LeBron James got injured. Zion Williamson did not play. Luca and Nicola Jokic don't care about the event at all. So all of the west starters either did not play or just aren't built for the all-star game. And now East, Kevin Arendt did not play. Giannis played 30 seconds. So that's seven out of the 10 all-star starters that the fans, the media, and the players voted to be the guys to represent this league either didn't play or don't play that style of basketball. I'm a believer that if Steph Curry and Zion and Kevin Arendt are here, the game is dramatically better. Giannis is here. The game is dramatically better, but we didn't have that this season because there's no better show than watching Steph Curry. I'm sorry, it's just no better show in basketball. You saw that last year. Hitting half-court shots and looking away on it, those are the type of moments we live for. And then this is what we got moments. LeBron James throwing a self-live or Jason Tatum versus Jaylen Brown. Were those the only two moments that are like, that I care about from this? Yo, Damian Lillert hit the half-court shot. Like it doesn't have many moments where I feel like last year or the year in Chicago, there were so many moments that we can talk about. So what's the solution? I don't know. I think Shay, it was like, hey, let us put some money on it or put money on the line and that'll make people care more. But the reality is for every good all-star game, we're gonna have like two duds. That's just gonna be the way it is. And it shouldn't be like that because, again, we wanna see our best athletes put together some shows and all of those things, but it's just the reality of the thing. I think we've, someone got spoiled. No, no, no, no, that's a negative connotation. I think we've grown accustomed to the last couple of years being a lot of fun and this year going back to what it was before the Elim ending. So it's all-star weekend, the all-star game dead. Until next year, where things will probably be better and then we're gonna forget about this year being back.