The NBA gave us another All-Star Weekend; it has been quite a while since I found any part of that offering sufficiently interesting to commit to watching it. Last weekend was no different; I paid it no never mind. But this morning, I was interested to see if anything noteworthy happened in the All-Star Game and went to CBSSports.com to see what they had to say. There I found a column with this headline:
“NBA All-Star Game, with little basketball and a lot of Kevin Hart, reaches new low of wasting everyone’s time”
Obviously, I had to read that column lest I be expelled from my local Curmudgeon Club and the article did not disappoint in the least. Let me give you just the opening paragraph here as a way to convince you to follow this link and read the entire column; it will only take about 3 or 4 minutes.
“If expectations are the root of frustration, then anyone who expected the NBA’s All-Star Game, or the entire weekend for that matter, to be anything other a complete and total waste of everyone’s time deserves to be frustrated.”
The Dunk Contest is an event that outlived its usefulness at least 25 years ago produced something that should have been embarrassing even in the NBA All-Star Weekend milieu. Mac McClung won the contest for the third year in a row, and he is a G-League player not an NBA player. This “prestigious NBA event” was won by someone who cannot sit at the end of an NBA bench. Here are two of his career NBA stats:
- Time in pro basketball = 3 seasons
- Total NBA games played = 5
That Dunk Contest “three-peat” is analogous to having a player from the AA Altoona Curve winning the MLB Home Run Derby three years in a row. That is just a tad more than marginally embarrassing.
Moving on but staying with the NBA … One NBA player who was not involved with the All-Star silliness last weekend was Ben Simmons; his career arc has been on a totally different vector heading for the last several years. After several mediocre seasons with the Nets, Simmons and the team reached a buyout agreement; the Nets waived him, and he signed on with the Clippers. Simmons is only 28 years old; he was the overall #1 pick in the Draft back in 2016, but he never lived up to sort of status.
Injuries – – and back surgery – – have limited Simmons’ playing time and his ability to compete; there is no denying that. At the same time, there have always been notions that he did not “put in the work” to advance his craft once he got to the NBA and that he was more interested in “celebrity status” than he was to “All-Star status”. Simmons arrived in Brooklyn in an exchange of two disgruntled players; the Sixers were happy to offload Simmons, and the Nets were equally happy to offload James Harden.
Now, Simmons comes to the Clippers off the waiver wire which should limit the expectations of Clippers’ fans and the Clippers’ brass to the point that Simmons need not be in the discussion for league MVP to meet expectations. Of course, he is going to a team in LA – – a city where there is clearly a “celebrity atmosphere” … This could be interesting.
Switching gears … I have mentioned the situation in Baltimore where massage therapists have accused Ravens’ kicker, Justin Tucker, of sexual misconduct during their massage sessions. Well, the news got worse over the weekend. Seven more female massage therapists have now come forward with similar accusations meaning that Tucker has now been identified as a miscreant by a total of 16 women employed at 8 different spas in the Baltimore area. Two points to consider here:
- With 16 accusers, Tucker still has a way to go to stand accused of “massage misbehavior” by as many women as Deshaun Watson was back in 2021. I believe Watson was named by 24 women as a creep.
- The accusations against Tucker are clustered in the 2012-2016 time frame. Does that mean there are more accusers to hear from in the period 2016-2025? Does that mean somehow Tucker “saw the error of his ways” and stopped being a “massage miscreant” in 2016? What this means to me is that I do not know nearly enough about what happened or did not happen in those massage sessions about a decade ago to make an unqualified pronouncement.
For the sake of completeness, Tucker has completely denied these allegations calling them “unequivocally false” and “desperate tabloid fodder.” More to come on this issue …
Finally, let me close with a comment about the MLB All-Star Game by Whitey Herzog:
“The only thing bad about winning the pennant is that you have to manage the All-Star Game the next year. I’d rather go fishing for three days.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
From best to worst, what is the ranking of four all-star games: MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL?
No NHL game this year, they had the 4 Nations. The round robin between the US and Canada game was great. Hard fought – literally, the stars were stars….
The NFL doesn’t even pretend to play
TenaciousP: And Ed too:
The NHL substitution of the 4 Nations tournament in place of the NHL All-Star Game is innovative and engaging. Since it takes place in lieu of the All-Star Game, I will rank it with the others and say it is the best of the lot by a wide margin.
MLB all-Star game is second best because the players in the game give real effort.
The NFL game of flag football is third. Yes, the players give effort in the flag football condition but the event loses points in my mind because it is a different game played by people who excelled in a different game. It would be akin to having the finalists in the World Series of Poker out there playing flag football.
The NBA Game is the worst – – again by a wide margin. The players don’t care; each possession is either an open 35-foot shot or a drive to the basket for an acrobatic dunk with no defense offered. the only question related to the game is whether the players or the fans find it more tedious.