Five Ways the NBA Can Improve All-Star Game Weekend
Each year, in the middle of the NBA season, an event with an insane amount of pomp and circumstance takes the national stage.
The All-Star Game is only the jewel on top of All-Star Weekend, the NBA’s crown, as there are a multitude of other events as well.
And now that the weekend has grown into the massive monster that it is, it has become apparent that there are too many events and that they’ve been watered down over the years.
This list proposes changes, which includes canceling some events, and just tweaking some others.
Tweak The Skills Competition
1 of 5
The Skills Competition began during the 2003 All-Star Game and is a decent enough event, although it is a bit boring.
Dribble, bounce pass, chest pass, weave through a few cones and lay the ball up.
And what makes it even more boring is when older players win.
Steve Nash and Jason Kidd are among the past winners, although there have been some youngsters like Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose to win too.
What the NBA should do is pick only younger players, up to their third year in the league, to give more shine to the up-and-comers.
And to make it more entertaining, force the players to dunk the ball at the end, and it has to be against one of the opponents playing defense.
Shooting Stars Competition
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Like the Skills Competition, the Shooting Stars Competition is a recent addition, starting in 2004, and there’s another parallel as well.
The Shooting Stars Competition is horrendously boring.
A retired player, current player, and WNBA player all team up from the same city to shoot from six different spots on the floor.
Basically, it’s a grown up version of Around the World, and it’s not entertaining at all. Watching overweight old timers hoist up half-court heaves is silly, and the NBA should cut the Shooting Stars before viewers start falling asleep while it’s on.
Change The Three-Point Competition
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The NBA wants repeat champions of the three-point contest and understandably so.
But, just because a player wins the contest, it doesn’t mean they should get a free ride into the next year’s event.
Daequan Cook won the contest with 19 points in the final round of the 2008-09 contest, but he completely stunk up the gym in 2009-10. Cook couldn’t get out of the first round and tied for the lowest score of the year with 15 points.
And beyond that, Cook was competing against Danilo Gallinari and Channing Frye among others, which aren’t exactly the biggest names in the game.
The NBA should pick most relevant of the best three-point shooters each year to give the event a little more star power.
Get RId of the H.O.R.S.E. Competition
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Just the thought of the NBA, the biggest and best basketball league in the world, having a H.O.R.S.E. competition is ridiculous.
H.O.R.S.E. is a game played by chumps and kids in driveways who can’t dunk as they try to come up with the craziest shots that their friends cant make.
For two years, Kevin Durant has won the H.O.R.S.E. Competition, and last season’s seemed to even be a little rigged.
Durant, one of the best shooters in the game, played against Rajon Rondo and Omri Casspi in last year’s event, which actually ran out of time on the TNT broadcast.
The first shot was made by a fan who uploaded his best shot, a bent over between the legs make from the top of the key, and the NBA players had to try to follow suit. None made it, and the contest started off in a asinine way.
But after Casspi was the first to drop out, Rondo and Durant were forced to shoot consecutive jumpers from behind the three-point arc.
Rondo, only a 26 percent shooter from deep, put up a good fight but eventually lost to Durant (37 percent shooter).
At the least, the NBA needs to get together some players that can be creative with shots, and hopefully they will just rid of it all together.
Put Stars Back into The Dunk Contest
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Remember the days of Michael versus 'Nique?
Nowadays MJ and Dominique Wilkens are merely judges, but back in the late 80s they were bamming big dunks and pushing one another to delight the crowd.
The first dunk contest took place in Denver's McNichols arena and featured two of the ABA's biggest stars of the day, the Nuggets David Thompson and the 76ers "Dr. J" Julius Erving.
But recently, the stars don't want to compete in the dunk contest and fans are left with the boring dunks of Chris Andersen and Shannon Brown.
The NBA must inject some life into the dunk contest and the best way to do so is by forcing stars to compete.
LeBron James threatened he would compete next year after Dwight Howard's dominance, but whether or not he does will be seen.
What would really drive ratings, and likely make for an actual exciting dunk contest, would be LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Howard going against each other.
Rich Kurtzman is a Colorado State University Alumnus and a freelance journalist. Along with being the Denver Nuggets Featured Columnist for B/R, Kurtzman is the CSU Rams and Fort Collins Beer Bars Examiner for examiner.com and the Colorado/Utah Regional Correspondent for stadiumjourney.com.
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