The NBA All-Star Game Doesn’t REALLY Matter, and That’s Ok
Alright let’s cut to the chase here; at the time of writing (February 5, 2020) the 2019-20 NBA All-Stars have been announced. And, as is tradition, the internet lashed out at this year’s All-Star snubs: Devin Booker and Bradley Beal. Now, full disclosure, I haven’t watched much of either the Phoenix Suns nor the Washington Wizards this year, so this isn’t a piece about how much records should or shouldn’t play a part in picking All-Stars or that Booker and Beal are really playing like All-Stars. No, the points I’m going to make here are gripes I’ve had for years now but could never quite articulate properly: (1) Being voted All-Star Game, with it being an EXHIBITION by NBA FANS, should NOT. AFFECT. LEGACY. And (2) the voting process for getting into the All-Star Game shouldn’t be modified or policed by the league because it is an EXHIBITION game.
Prior to 2017, the NBA All-Star Game was purely an event for fans of the league. For 66 years, fans would cast their votes for the players THEY wanted to see face off for one night. Based on this isolated definition, I’m sure no one would have a problem with this, me included. However, somewhere along the line, SOMEONE decided that using the amount of times a player was voted into an exhibition game by fans was a good metric for determining how good that player is/was.
And I can’t stress how much of a terrible idea that was. To this day (and for many days to come after this, I’m sure) Hall of Fame players are always introduced as an, “x,” time All-Star. Lebron James: 3x NBA Champion, 3x Finals MVP, 4x MVP, 2007-08 scoring champion. All of these are indeed accolades more than worthy of mentioning when talking about the resume of one of the greatest basketball players in history. But you know which “accolade” isn’t in my opinion? Lebron James: 16x All-Star. Why do we put so much weight behind a popularity vote? Being an All-Star doesn’t really say much other than being a player fans want to see play in an exhibition game.
Of course, being an All-Star isn’t a BAD thing, far from it. I just don’t believe it should be used as a measuring stick when talking about why great players were great, especially when there are so many other means of doing so in the 21st century. If in seventeen years, I (hypothetically) want to argue that Trae Young is a top five point guard because he dropped 47 on the Brooklyn Nets one night in December, I can pull up the boxscore in five seconds, the highlight compilation on Youtube, and even find the game thread on Reddit if I thought that would help my case.
The point is, in 2020, a popularity contest shouldn’t be mentioned alongside genuine, concrete accomplishments. The All-Star Game was supposed to be something for the fans, and somewhere along the line, it got twisted into some prestigious event to the point where the NBA deemed it was necessary to change the fan vote to a fan-player-media vote as some sort of quality control. Back in 2016, Zaza Pachulia finished just 14k votes away from being an All-Star at the expense of Kawhi Leonard despite averaging ten points and ten rebounds. The following January, Zaza did it again, this time landing the SECOND frontcourt spot, ahead of Kawhi, AD, and Draymond Green.
Needless to say, the front office, players, and former players had enough and changed the whole format. And, for the reasons listed above, I always had a problem with these changes. If 1 million people want to see Zaza Pachulia play in an exhibition game against Giannis Antetokounmpo or Kevin Love, then LET him; the game DOESN’T mean anything. But, clearly no one in the NBA offices feels the way I do, and now players are on Twitter cursing into the void because they don’t get to play in the All-Star game. And for what? Not a thing.
I motion that both the NBA and its fans should take a step back and remember that the All-Star game was just something to generate fan interest for a few days, nothing more. Let Twitter meme Alex Curoso in the starting lineup for the night so fans can watch him get his shots slapped into the third row by Tacko Fall; the NBA is already scrambling because of low ratings, why not let the All-Star Game go back to being the wacky weekend of harmless fun it was meant to?