The 2017 NBA All-Star Weekend should be great as it’s currently put together. Of all of our country’s pro-sports leagues, the NBA’s annual midseason showcase is the best and most entertaining. Most of that’s simply because basketball is the best sport. Basketball is the most fun, so it makes sense its most fun weekend is the most fun of all fun sports weekends.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. That’s why I’m putting together an event-by-event rundown of my ideal NBA All-Star Weekend. Are some of these ideas silly and dumb ideas? Yep. Are silly and dumb ideas also sometimes fun ideas? You bet. (There are also some not-dumb-but-good ideas here, too.)
All-Star Weekend will be awesome, but let’s see if we can make it even better.
NBA All-Star Celebrity Game
I love the celebrity game, and I’m not ashamed to say it. It humanizes these people a little. They go out there, they throw up some bricks, they get embarrassed by someone like T-Mac or Skylar Diggins. It brings them back down to earth. And you know if anyone’s a little too high on their own supply, it’s the Property Brothers.
But I think the thing I like the most about the celebrity game is finding out that some random celebrity or musician is actually pretty good at basketball. I had no idea Win Butler was good at basketball before last year. He’s pretty good! That’s fun, and All-Star Weekend should be fun.
Anyway, here are my only demands for this year’s game.
Lil Wayne (Coach): You’re not gonna host an ASG in New Orleans and not get this man involved. I need to see Lil Tunechi yell out “saynchronized swimmaz” as a play call on national television.
Kellyanne Conway (Coach): If she can convince half the country that lies are actually true, she could sway a ref on a block/charge call.
JE Skeets: It’s about time the TBJ/Starters crew was repped in this game.
Kobe: There’s always a former pro in this game. Usually, they’re a little further into retirement than Kobe is, but can you imagine Kobe drilling a jumper over someone like Jerry Ferrara and snarling at Puff Daddy for heckling him all game?
Barack Obama: The President’s had a lot to deal with recently. Let’s give the man a break and let him ball out for a little while. Plus, the mug he would give Team Conway when he hits the game-winner would light the internet on fire.
Any NBA Mascot: Remember how fun it was to use the NBA Jam cheat to play as Benny the Bull or Hugo the Hornet? Let’s make that come to life.
Rising Stars Challenge
Players in bold were not named in the official rosters last week
US: D’Angelo Russell, Devin Booker, Karl-Anthony Towns, Myles Turner, Jaylen Brown, Brandon Ingram, Malcolm Brogdon, Kris Dunn, Marquese Chriss, Sam Dekker, Montrezl Harrell
World: Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Buddy Hield, Kristaps Porzingis, Dario Saric, Dante Exum, Ben Simmons, Thon Maker, Jamal Murray, Davis Bertans, Trey Lyles, Domantas Sabonis
Some notes on my teams:
- It’s fun to imagine how pissed D’Angelo Russell is about the NBA officially declaring him as still being a rising star instead of an established one.
- Montrezl Harrell has the angriest dunks and I like them. He and Dekker have been nice surprises for the Rockets so far. Harrell’s minutes have doubled from last season, and he’s doing a lot more with them: his box plus-minus has gone from nearly replacement level (-1.9) to above average (1.3), per Basketball Reference.
- Jaylen Brown can jump very high and do fun things, so he should be in this game.
- Did you know that in games in which Davis Bertans scores at all, the Spurs are 18-2? If I’m Pop, I start him, get him to the line early, and rest the starters the rest of the game.
- With the miles of limbs ahead of him on Milwaukee’s depth chart, it’s been tough for equally lanky Thon “Tuna” Maker to find minutes this year. That’s part of the point of this game—along with the big-name pups like Towns and Embiid, I want to watch some exciting young players I don’t normally get the chance to.
- I’m excited for Embiid to tweet at one of the American players during the game while on the bench about how he’s going to burn their ass during his next shift.
- Ben Simmons! Don’t care that he has no official timeline to return to playing competitive basketball. Can we just put him in a Rascal and watch him throw back-door passes while seated.
Fading Stars Game
This’ll take place at halftime of the Rising Stars game. Let’s give these guys—whose best days are probably behind them—one last fun hurrah.
East: Rajon Rondo, Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Jeff Green, Roy Hibbert
West: Jameer Nelson, Deron Williams, Paul Pierce, Metta World Peace, Nikola Pekovic
Skills Challenge
Like most, I am all in on the smalls vs. bigs bracket they introduced to this event last year. Look at these big guys run! They can dribble, too! And pass! Towns hitting the three that sealed it for Team Huge last season was great, and seeing the three other beefers on his “team” mob him afterwards was even better. Here’s my bracket for 2017:
Lil Guy: Kyrie Irving
Lil Guy: John Wall
Lil Guy: Kemba Walker
Lil Guy: Isaiah Thomas
Big Beefer: Nikola Jokic
Big Beefer: Karl-Anthony Towns
Big Beefer: Kristaps Porzingis
Big Beefer: Joel Embiid
Yep, I’m going with a four-man Eastern Conference point-guard battle royal in the Lil Guys division. Both conferences are loaded with deserving guards, and you could make a legitimate argument for any of the above (along with DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry) to start in the All-Star game. Let’s settle things there by having Irving defend his starting spot against the other three: if he can’t get to the final, he surrenders his spot to whichever East guard does.
Look at these beefy guys! They’ll all be pulling double duty with their spots in the Rising Stars Challenge, but I don’t care. Each one of them epitomizes the whole “unicorn” lexicon taking over NBA Twitter, so there’s no better even for each of them to show off those mystical skills. Towns needs to be here to defend his crown. Porzingis is already one of the most popular and skilled bigs in the league. Jokic will be whipping those patented one-handed passes. Embiid is Embiid. It pains me to leave out Giannis, but I’d rather see Jokic get some national limelight for a change.
Three-Point Contest
This is the best event of the weekend. It’s frequently competitive and close, it moves relatively quickly, and it’s the lone event where big-time stars mingle with and are pushed by guys who aren’t stars. When players like Anthony Morrow, Matt Bonner, and Steve Novak have a legit shot at beating someone like Stephen Curry in a shooting contest, that’s neat.
My lineup: Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Eric Gordon, Joe Ingles, Otto Porter, Jr., JJ Redick, and Kyle Lowry.
- The trio from Golden State has been too good from three this season (and forever) to leave any of them out. If anyone can hit a perfect 34/34 score, it’ll be one of these guys.
- Gordon, Ingles, and Porter are your they’re-not-stars-but-they-could-still-win-this-thing representatives. Ingles, currently hitting 45% from deep, has led the league in three-point percentage for a good chunk of the season, and Gordon’s long-distance flame throwing on the team that shoots and hits the most threes per game has him firmly in the discussion for Sixth Man of the Year. Porter’s been sneaky good this year, specifically from three but also overall offensively. Per Basketball Reference, Porter’s sinking a league-leading 46% of his triples, and he’s also first in the league in offensive rating, giving the Wiz 129 points per 100 possessions.
- Let’s fill this puppy out with a couple always-solid snipers in Redick and Lowry.
- One twist I wouldn’t mind seeing: contested shots. During one random ball on each rack, one of the rebounders gets to run out at the shooter with his hand in the air. Let’s see how stone cold these guys’ rhythms really are.
The Dunk Contest
A point of semantics, first of all: can we just call this “the dunk contest” now? It’s what everybody says when they talk about it. Nobody asks you if you watched the “Verizon Slam Dunk.” I’m fine with sponsorship, but just put the word “contest” at the end so we can pretend that real people who actually talk named this event.
First, my participant picks:
- Larry Nance, Jr.: He got an auto-invite from me when he flashed Brook Lopez’s life before his eyes earlier this season. Would he be able to top that evisceration? Put him in so we can find out!
- Andrew Wiggins: We’ve known for a long time that Wiggins can fly, and we’ve seen it in bunches this season. Reigning champ and fellow Timberpup Zach LaVine plugged Wiggins’ dunking ability on an episode of the Vertical Podcast with Chris Mannix earlier this season, and if his dunks are good enough for the champ, they should be good enough for us.
- Aaron Gordon: Biggest no-duh pick of the bunch. The “chair Gordon” dunk last season should have sealed it for him.
- Norman Powell: Lots of ways you could go here with the last pick, but I like Powell’s hangtime. He loves finishing fast breaks with this sort of leaning one-hander that makes him look like he’s floating up the entire way. All that time in the air will give him plenty of options for getting creative.
Now, for the setup: I’m tired of subjective scoring in these things. How do we compare a free-throw line dunk to a crazy, prop-assisted one? They’re too different. With that in mind, I’m proposing a four-dunk first round that’ll help us more accurately compare each dunker’s work. Top two dunkers move on to the final, where anything goes. Here’s how that first round will work:
- First dunk: No props, no partners. Let’s see these guys’ raw creativity and ability with some good ol’ windmills, double pumps, and the like. The purest dunks are usually the best dunks.
- Second dunk: Partner-assisted. Each dunker picks a teammate/partner to throw them a tasty lob, bounce one off the floor, stand there to be jumped over, etc.
- Third dunk: Prop dunk. Gordon perfected the art of the prop dunk last year with the Stuff/Phunkeeduck dunk (Phunkeedunk?), earning a one-year renewal of my enthusiasm for it. But just putting on a costume and doing a run-of-the-mill dunk doesn’t make it a good dunk.
- Fourth dunk: Defended dunk. Poster dunks are the ones we lose our minds for during games, so let’s bring them here. Let’s not complicate how it would work: the defender would simply stand in the restricted area and wouldn’t be allowed to leave it, waiting to snuff out the contestant’s attempt. If you can cram one on another NBAer trying to stop you, you’ll really earn those 10s the judges seem all too willing to throw down during these. Not sure where you’ll find willing defenders, but let me dream, ok?
21
Twenty-one (or 32 or whatever score you play to) is the ultimate playground game when the bodies aren’t there for an actual game. The NBA has tried out stuff like this before, notably with their H.O.R.S.E competitions back in 2009 and ‘10, so they should be open to it here. As for the competitors, is there any other way to go?
Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, James Harden.
You put those three out there going 1-on-1-on-1 and the world will stop. People cooking dinner in the kitchen will turn around, become hypnotized by the carnage they’re seeing, forget what it was they were doing in the first place, and burn their food. This is the NBA version of Luke Skywalker confronting Darth Vader, but also there’s another Vader. We need this.
66th NBA All-Star Game
Players in bold were snubbies and not named to the official roster last week.
East starters: Isaiah Thomas, Kyle Lowry, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jimmy Butler
West starters: James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant
East reserves: Kyrie Irving, John Wall, Kevin Love, Paul George, Paul Millsap, Joel Embiid, Kemba Walker
West reserves: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, DeMarcus Cousins, Marc Gasol, Gordon Hayward, Rudy Gobert (IR for Chris Paul)
Embiid’s candidacy has been debated ad nauseam for the last few weeks, and I find myself among those deciding to ignore the minute-restriction stuff when it comes to this. The dude is flat-out must-watch when he’s in, scoring off the dribble, from three, and in the post. All-Star games should be about fun, and nobody’s Fun Rating is higher than Embiid’s.
I get it, but even with the injury, it was surprising to see Paul left off the roster. I also understand including DeAndre Jordan and Draymond Green, but Gobert was, to me, this year’s biggest snub. Looking purely at stats, here’s where the Stifle Tower’s ranking this year across the league:
- Defensive win shares: 1st
- Overall win shares: 4th
- Rebounds (total): 3rd
- Offensive rebounds (total): 1st
- Blocks (per game): 1st
- Block %: 2nd
- Blocks (total): 1st
- Field goal %: 2nd
- Effective field goal %: 2nd
- True shooting %: 1st
- Defensive rating: 1st
- Defensive box plus/minus: 3rd
As if all that isn’t enough, his impact is easy to see by just watching. Nobody spooks ball handlers into kicking it or barfing up an awkward floater more than Gobert. He changes the way offenses function on every possession. This might sound like it runs counter to my “All-Star games should be about fun” argument earlier, but cool blocks and nicknames are fun.
And there you have it: an NBA All-Star Weekend with the fun dial turned up to 11. Let’s hope the real thing lives up to it.
