Ty Watches the 2022 NBA All Star Weekend
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Let's talk about the NBA all star weekend now. I
want to get the boring or not so good things out of the way first. The celebrity game was so bad that I tuned out after a few minutes. My son stayed with it a bit longer, but even though he is ten and currently obsessed with basketball, turned it off before halftime. He came upstairs in our house and exclaimed, "what a terrible game that was". Again, he is ten. The one cool thing is my wife knew about the MVP of the game, Alex Toussaint, because she rides a Peloton and does some of his classes. Other than that, it was rough stuff. And then we have the dunk contest. This year was real bad. So was last year. The past two dunk contests have reminded me of the post Vince Carter, pre Zach Lavine and Aaron Gordon dunk contests. There were way too many misses, way too many free attempts, dunks that were amazing, but not as great as some other things I have seen and it took far too long. Go look up the picture of Shaq watching the dunk contest this year and that sums it up perfectly. It was bad. I was also very confused by the skills competition. I usually like this portion of the weekend, but the scoring was weird, the teams were off and it was all around confusing. I did like the passing thing and the obstacle course, but the half court shot was not needed, and the shooting from different areas for different amounts of points, I could have done without that. But it was dope to see Evan Mobley and Darius Garland perform really well.
Let's get to some of the better aspects of the weekend. Even though the top 75 draft was like watching paint dry, it was rad to hear former greats talk about other greats and what made them so great. Dominique Wilkins messed up by not picking Jordan first overall, but that is besides the point. It was neat to hear them all go into great detail about what made these players so great. I also liked the three point contest. The three point contest can drag from time to time, but seeing Karl Anthony Towns go far, and then win it all, that was pretty great. The other competitors did solid, but KAT crushed, and it was dope to see a big man win it for once. I also liked the new format of the rising stars game. It was a neat way to switch it up a bit. Change can be good, and this was a very solid change and I hope they continue to roll with it this way going forward.
Finally we have the actual game. The closer to the whole weekend. The game itself was kind of blah for the entirety of the first half. There was no defense, tons of scoring and dunks galore. I did love the dunks. It was incredible to see these guys do some amazing athletic feats. I especially loved seeing Ja Morant do two 360 dunks. It was also amazing to watch Steph hit eight threes in the first half. Steph usually does not bring it in all star games. But I think the fact that he has been in a minor slump for a bit, and that the Cleveland crowd booed him, he decided he was going to bring it. He hit eight more threes in the second half and made a two pointer and ended the night with 50. Giannis also scored 30. LeBron was in the mid 20's. There were a lot of points being scored by the biggest names in the league right now. It was wild. And then, with the Elam Ending in place, that makes the final quarter so much fun to watch. It was a nail biter, each team traded baskets and the ending was almost too perfect. LeBron hit a fadeaway jumper, in Cleveland, after making comments about how he was not closing the door on returning there to end his career. It was awesome.
The NBA all star weekend has some things they need to work out, namely the dunk contest, but the game, especially with the Elam Ending, has been really fun for the last three seasons.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing, the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast, and the greatest basketball writer on the internet.