NBA All-Star Game 2012: This Year's Game Missing Typical Swag

The 2012 NBA All-Star Weekend festivities in Orlando have been, to say the least, something to yawn over.

In the coming generation, the NBA has been associated as much with a sense of awe-inducing impressiveness as it has been with basketball itself. There’s a certain delivery that basketball has which gives it an advantage over other more conservative sports, and the league has been rewarded in the past with much-deserved hype that other professional athletes are missing.

In recent years, this has translated into an exciting All Star weekend that generates attention from across the country.

The 2012 All-Star Weekend, however, has been about as flat as a week-old, warm Sprite or the tires of a brand new Kia sports car that just ran over a field of nails. (Note: As an avid NBA fan, I feel as if I am legally bound to support those two companies and wanted to name-drop accordingly.)

Perhaps it is the intense ties to corporate sponsorship that has made the events of the weekend seem more like a short fizzle than an intense bursting pop. It is the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest, after all, that generated absolutely no buzz compared to the fabled days of yore featuring Dr. J and Vince Carter.

Even on Twitter, a medium designed for the fast-paced, quick reactionary time of a competition like the slam dunk contest, no one really cared who won either way. Regardless of whether or not this had anything to do with the lack of star power and more conservative moves in this year’s competition, I wanted to see something like Iman Shumpert jump over Jeremy Lin sleeping on a couch.

This year simply had no relevance. Last year featured one of the league’s most exciting young stars jumping over a freakin’ Kia. 2012 had Jeremy Evans doing something a lot less cool.

If the lockout has anything to do with the no-buzz attitude that the weekend is being attached with, then that assumes that fans weren’t ready for an NBA season and were only interested in the playoffs.

That, as we’ve learned, is simply not true, as TNT viewership is up 25 percent this season. In the condensed season, we’ve seen a rise to stardom from a sensation like Jeremy Lin (noticeably absent from the 2012 All-Star Game).

Other than that, the star power features familiar names like Kobe Bryant (his 14th appearance), LeBron James (his eighth appearance) and Kevin Durant (someone we already know is good) without any of the new names like Blake Griffin last year.

Some may also wonder if the location of the event has anything to do with the general lack of interest in the weekend.

Coming off a year when Blake Griffin owned Los Angeles in one of the biggest sports markets in the world, we now feature a sports city playing second-fiddle to Miami in their own state, and a city whose star player is slowly maneuvering his way out of the city and potentially to the Lakers.

The buzz of Orlando is barely making a dent in the interest of sports fans, and that is the exact opposite approach needed, considering that this year’s event is inherently shooting itself in the foot from the start by going up against the Oscars.

The Oscars, a typical staple in American television culture, generated 41.7 million viewers in 2010, which is astronomically more than the 6.8 million that the 2010 NBA All-Star Game generated.

This year, the All-Star Game is going up against the Oscars, and that hardly speaks well for the marketability of the event.

And the interest is dwindling: While the game received a 5.2 Nielsen rating in 2011, there was a 3.8 rating in 2010. Compare that to the mid-90s, when the game typically received a 10+ rating (Note: 12.8 in ’92, 14.3 in ’93, 9.1 in ’94, 10.7 in ‘95, 11.7 in ‘96, 11.2 in ‘97, and 10.6 in ‘98), and you see that this is becoming a more apparent issue.

The NBA is a contemporary game, with close ties to the hip-hop, video games and sponsorship markets.

Yet in 2012, there’s no reason to watch the game. We know who’s good, and we’re learning absolutely nothing new. There’s no hype, nothing “interesting” about Orlando like there was in Vegas, or the new football stadium in Dallas, or Blake Griffin in L.A., and fans may just want a break from the condensed action that is the 2012 NBA season.

It’s a shame, really, because the All-Star Weekend is typically one of the more fun weekends of the year if it’s done right.

Instead, it’s being put to the side and rightfully becoming deemed irrelevant. If I were in charge of the NBA (ha!), I’d take a page from Kanye West and Jay-Z. If the NBA invented “swag” in sports, then it’s about time they get their swagger back.

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