 What's the word, y'all? NBA All-Star Weekend was a dud. I think that's two years in a row, y'all, where it was a complete, complete dud. And it's somewhat of a consensus. If you look on the internet, a lot of people didn't really enjoy it. And part of this video is me trying to figure out, should I care? Does it matter that All-Star Weekend isn't fun or competitive or all of these other things? Should it really matter? I don't know. But we're gonna talk about some of the things that weren't as great from the perspective as A, a diehard NBA fan, somebody that was in the arena for most of the events. But Lockheed, let me know what you think. I wanna give the credit where it's due because it wasn't void of fun. Like there are a decent amount of events that were really cool. I really do like the skills competition, the way they formatted it over the last 30 years to where we got to this point. One of the smartest things Adam Silver and company has done is make it so that one of the teams that is participating is the hometown team because the arena was electric when the Pacers was doing the skills competition. So I thought that was an absolute win. The three point shootout was as competitive as we seen it. We saw a four way tie in the first round to get to the second round. And then the Sabrina versus Steph Curry thing was as fun of a one-off event as we've had in a while. Even if the commentary around it wasn't necessarily great as somebody that was in the arena and then watched it back on TV, it was super, super fun to see two of the best shooters on this planet go head to head. That's kinda it. Those three things that I just mentioned being super fun, at least the Steph Curry and Sabrina thing is something that, I mean, hell, bring it back. Caitlin Clark is gonna be in the league next season. I kinda like the idea of having Steph versus Sabrina and Dane versus Caitlin on two, on two, three point shootout, whatever. But the other things, the staple things, the skills competition, three point shootout, that's, those aren't the main attractions. People come to Sunday night or Saturday night to watch the dunk contest and people come to Sunday to see the game. And the dunk contest was me, it was. Shout out to Mack McClung. He put together some really solid dunks. Shout out to Jacob Toppin who got robbed and one of the dunks he did was ridiculous. And the way the arena, again, I'm in this arena, they reacted to this dunk as if it was like a Yonfest. Like that was a ridiculous dunk. And the conversation is always gonna be, oh, we got spoiled by Aaron Gordon. We got spoiled by Zach Levine back in 2016. The other conversation is gonna be like, well, this is what we get when we don't get the big names. And personally, I don't feel that way. Like for sure, we'd love to have a jam around. For sure, we would love to have Zion Williamson for at least two years. I don't know if Zion has put on a crazy show nowadays. But I'm like looking around the association about the big names that Shipper participate. How many people in a 2024 all-star game do you actually wanna see in a dunk contest that you think you put on some ridiculous dunks to make us satisfied? I don't think it's that many people. Looking at the rosters, Donovan Mitchell performed in it a few years back. I don't know if you remember that. And then the only guy on these two rosters that I'm looking at be like, oh, that would be cool to have them in a dunk contest is Anthony Edwards. So you talk about the big names. What names are you talking about? You wanna bring Zach Levine back? Have you watched any Bulls games over the last two seasons? You know, he's not dunking like he was in 2016. So I don't think it's a lot of, oh my God, the top players don't wanna do it. Man, we've been doing the dunk contest since 1976. 1976 is almost 50 years ago. I feel like we've exhausted 99.9% of dunks. And that's why we get to the point where it's a lot of showmanship. We saw a few years back, Timberlands, Dunkin' at Tams, the NFT Dunk. Dunkin' over a plane is what John Collins did. Like it's a lot of showmanship. This year we saw Jaylen Brown be the first all-star to appear in a dunk contest in like five years. His dunks were trash, but I commend him for being one of the top guys to go in. But even his dunks weren't about the finish. It was about, oh my God, I got this Dominique Wilkins looking like person that's teaching me how to do Dominique Wilkins' dunk. We've seen Dominique Wilkins' dunk 40 years ago. But it's the showmanship. I seen that just one stream of the year for the second year running. He's one of the most popular people in social media right now. Let's dunk over him, but make sure he's sitting in the chair first. Like it's the showmanship more than the actual dunking. And in our best years, it went a lot of showmanship when Aaron Gordon and Zach Levine was doing a thing. Like yeah, they had the little hoverboards because those was popping off back then. But other than that, it was like I'm dunking from the Frito line between my legs or I'm doing it with me. It was strictly based on the bunnies and it was strictly based on the dunk. And I think at this point in time, how creative can you really get without you being a professional dunk? Is there people on his earth that I know 100% can dominate this and put it together to some crazy, crazy dunks, but they're not NBA players. When Jalen Brown or Jacob Toppin or Hamek Hawkes are working on their game every single day or Mack McClung, they're not necessarily throwing down a dunk contest quality dunks in a normal day. They are trying to hone in on their craft to get an NBA roster, keep an NBA roster spot, or go to the next level. Dunking is just a very, very small fraction of what they do on a nightly basis or on a workout basis. So I can't really expect them to come to here and be like, oh my God, nobody has done a 1060 between the legs cartwheel dunk. But that fictional dunk that I just talked about, the dunk cartwheel dunk, it might be a professional dunker that do that, but do the NBA want it? Like, you know what I'm saying? The NBA felt some type of way of putting Mack McClung out there and he's a part of the NBA network. Like he's not an NBA player right now, but he was a part of the NBA network. And they were like, I don't know, man. I don't know about that guy. And if it wasn't for that guy, Utah would have been a zero out of 10. So what is the solution to the dunk contest? I don't, I do not have it. I was on Steven A. Smith's podcast over All Star Weekend and his solution was you take those best dunkers in the world that aren't NBA players, the professional dunkers, and you bring them to All Star Weekend and have them be coached slash sponsored by a real NBA player. So now LeBron James, a part of the dunk contest, without being a part of the dunk contest, Mike up, Bron, and talk about stuff, whatever. And I don't hate the idea, but it just goes too far away to what we have right now. And it seems like a lot of the things that are incorporated in sports in general it's a gradual incorporation set to be like, hey, we're gonna change the entire format right here right now. So I like the idea. I think it's too far left for Adam Silver to be like, yes, you get to the actual game. Now, Adam Silver last year, he said very publicly that he wasn't a fan of the way Utah was. Zero defense, this and that. Didn't feel like an All Star game. It felt like something else. So he said, hey, I'm gonna get rid of the draft aspect. I'm gonna get rid of the Elim ending. We're gonna play straight up East versus West and because of the pride aspect of putting on from not just your city, but this entire part of the association that might be enough for the players to really, really care. And it was actually, and we saw the most points ever scored tonight. And you can tell immediately that Adam Silver was not happy. And to the Eastern Conference All Stars, you scored the most points. Well, congratulations. You scored the most points. Well, well, I just, he hates it and a lot of fans hate it too. And listen, I'm not here to be the fun police. If you enjoyed tonight, that is completely cool. At the end of the day, this is the best talents of basketball that we have in our association playing on the same court. Even if it is high scoring and no defense and just three point shots. If you enjoyed it, that is completely okay. I am not in the group of people that enjoyed it. I'm not, and this is kind of the way All Stars goes, right? We go through these waves. We'll have two really, really great years back to back. And we'll have four that are like, oh, do we need to change something? And this is one of the, do we need to change something? Years. And back to the first thing I said in this video, does it even, does it even matter? Is it just cool to see Luca and Nicola Jokic on the same court together playing together, even though they both really don't care? Like, is it even a problem? And if it is a problem, we need to find some type of solutions to make it better. I am completely okay if the first three quarters are super high scoring from both squads. But what I want as a fan is to see the fourth quarter be more competitive. I am not advocating for Kawhi Leonard to get in his stance like his DPOY years. I am not advocating for Anthony Davis to protect the paint like he does in the regular season. All I kind of want is C-minus defense. C-minus. How about we can test Damian Lillichai and not allow him to get up 33 pointers in a game? How about instead of letting Carthony Towns walk to the basket, we just get in front of him a little bit, you know? C-minus defense would change this whole game. But I don't blame the players for not wanting to do that because this is an exhibition game. In Indiana right now, I am on the brink of my first vacation of the year. I'm not trying to mess up my ankle. I'm not trying to do something tonight that would jeopardize my team's real NBA season. I understand that. But we also have had years where we see those duels play hard. Kimba Walker is the prime example of this. In 2020, Kimba Walker played like every single minute of the fourth quarter of the game that was the e-limb ending game, right? And if I'm not mistaken, this was the very first year of the e-limb ending. In my mind, that was about to stick because it went very well. Now I did end, I think, on some free throws from Anthony Davis. But regardless, for the last quarter, everybody was completely locked in. So here's the box score. Ended up being 157 to 155. Again, really, really good all-star game. Kawhi dropped 30. Chris Paul, my goat had 23. Kimba, like I mentioned, played 30 minutes. And then for the rest of the season, I don't know if y'all remember this, that game was on February 16th. So right here, he missed every, he missed five games coming out the break and then was out of the lineup. And then we get to the playoffs and he got back on track. But like he was on the slum, one of a minute restriction, so on and so forth. But in that game, Kawhi took like three charges. Like they cared. They cared about that game. So I was just confused that the e-limb ending didn't come back. So I've seen a lot of people suggest over Twitter in the last couple of hours since it ended. What can we do? One of it was like, we saw all these people care about the NCC tournament once we attached to half a million dollars to every single player. Yeah, but they're already playing for charity. What would that look like to be like, yeah, I don't care about the girls and boys club of Indianapolis, but I get in my stance for myself. Like that would just look kind of weird. Some people suggest it that we no longer do East versus West, but we kind of tackle it the way we do the skills challenge where it's like multiple different teams. They go against each other. And they, I'm sorry, it starts challenges multiple different teams and go against each other. Then we see two teams mean the finals. I don't hate that idea. But again, it still goes down to the fact that like why should LeBron care, you know? And this is, I think what makes it so much more difficult is that the NBA All-Star weekend was the gold standard. Like I can't even go to any other sport and be like, oh, they doing like this. So let's kind of steal what they doing. Football turned their pro bowl to flag football. Baseball, don't get me started. So like the NBA has always been the gold standard. And now we're kind of, we've been seeing it go down for the last couple of years. I don't even have a frame of reference on what to do or what we can. I know something we can do on Saturday night, that will be cool. That is that one-on-one tournament everybody's been asking for for the last decade. I got to interview Jason Tatum. It's a good segue, Kenny. And that link should be in the description. And one of the last things I asked him was about a one-on-one tournament. I asked him who would win a one-on-one tournament. He thought, if we're gonna do it, we gotta break it up to three categories, a guard, wings, and a bigs. I think that's pretty smart. And he said that if it were to happen, you would participate. I like that idea. How many other superstars would say they would participate? Maybe this is the next thing to be added to Saturday. I don't know, let me know what you think. I do believe there were very interesting moments. Someone actually suggested in my tweet that maybe it's okay if the basketball isn't good if we saw more of the personalities, right? I know we have moments where people are mic'd up, they do some interviews and stuff, but maybe that's just not enough. Maybe an alt-cast of Draymond Green, Taylor Rooks, and Charles Barkley is cool, but that's not enough. Maybe we mic'd up more to players. Maybe we really go in on the fun aspect of it. But then again, that only benefits the people at home and not the people in the arena. And the people in the arena are typically the people paying thousands of dollars. So I don't really know how we do it. I don't hate that idea though. Show the personalities a little bit more. But you let me know what you think.