The NBA’s 73rd All-Star game and its associated competitions and challenges are generally disinteresting enough that I now know significantly more about college basketball than I did a week ago. That didn’t prevent All-Star weekend from generating its annual controversy.
The events I did pay attention to — the dunk contest, three-point contest, and the special Sabrina Ionescu-Steph Curry shootout — pretty much matched my expectations for them going in. The three-point contest is fun and really always should be. If everyone scores terribly, that’s funny; if someone shoots out of their mind, that’s exciting; if everyone does pretty well and it’s competitive, like this year, you get an engaging, somewhat tense series that makes for good television. I wanted Mitchell or Markkanen to take the award home but Lillard’s a great shooter, he won it on the final shot, and no one embarrassed themselves — solid all around.
The dunk contest had a curious set of participants, and I wasn’t super high on either of Jaylen Brown or Jaime Jaquez Jr. managing any dunks that were remotely fancy. Mac McClung, who now has half as many dunk contest victories as NBA games played, was fantastic. So was Jacob Toppin. Jaylen Brown gimmicked his way into the final round and Jaquez Jr. beat my expectations, but not by enough to be especially memorable. My perception of him as a player is as more of a rugged, post-centric wing, not really the high-flying type. He did technically jump over Shaq, though, and a 39 inch vertical at the 2023 combine was third highest out of everyone measured. It’s also always fun to get rookies an early chance in the national spotlight. I’d have put Toppin in the final rather than Brown, who pulled the crazy stunt of jumping over a seated 5’3” Kai Cenat.
I’ve seen complaints that the dunk contest has run its course simply because all the cool and physically doable dunks have already been seen. Compared to the 80s and 90s, that makes sense. Windmills and eastbays were still interesting and you couldn’t watch YouTube dunk specialists doing things that most NBA players have never even tried. But I still think that clean, athletic dunks are cool enough to warrant tuning in. If you expect your mind to be blown, then maybe you will be disappointed every year. I don’t, and it’s still a pretty good watch.
If there’s a real problem, it’s that the best dunkers in the NBA don’t actually bother with the contest. Ja Morant, Anthony Edwards, and Zion Williamson are massive names who would easily generate hype and likely would pull some fantastic dunks, too.
The Ionescu-Curry competition was a brilliant addition. They were both terrific, and it was a great piece of exposure for one of the stars of the WNBA and best shooters in the world. Ionescu’s 37 points in the 2023 three point contest is one of the craziest recorded stretches of shooting by a professional basketball player.
The all-star game itself was a hilarious response to expectations that it would ‘be more competitive this year’ after a couple of minor tweaks. Instead, the Eastern Conference won with an absurd 211 points. Jokic and Luka were memorable particularly for trying as little as possible. Luka’s 70-foot heave with 23 seconds on the shot clock was probably still a shot he practices and makes (I’d love to see a trick shot competition), but aptly summarized how seriously the game was taken. Jokic even feigned a slam dunk at one point only to calmly lay it in.
Is there a fix? No, and that’s ok. The moment a player exerts a bit more effort and gets injured will be the moment people stop complaining that extremely competitive athletes are focusing too much on saving their bodies for a championship run at the expense of putting on a random show for everyone in February. For tradition’s sake I understand why the game still exists. However, I don’t mind that on their one week off the best players in the NBA goof around a little rather than uselessly demonstrate their “killer mentality” or something.
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