The star players are sleeping around
The NBA All-Star Weekend is struggling to compete with the excitement of the NBA Trade Deadline.
The former, an explosive mid-season tradition of celebrating of the league’s brightest stars has, after many years, become inevitable.
As a kid, I lived for this inevitability. When the 2002 All-Star Game was held in Philly, I went to “Jam Session” twice. All grown up now, I guess I can concede that these kinds of “pop-up” experiences happen in different forms—with different names—in the host cities every single year. Hordes of marketing teams converge on the town with an interest in making All-Star Weekend as splashy as possible for the folks who are from that city. If you never get a chance to see the brightest stars up close, at the actual game, there’s still plenty happening for you to see. This is inevitable.
But back then, “Jam Session” was just for me. It was just for Philly. It felt like a pure celebration of the cultural chokehold Allen Iverson had over the city, the league, and my eyeballs. It felt like the daily backdrop of my 11-year old world had suddenly become the epicenter of the basketball world. At Jam Session, all kinds of celebration was possible: Play arcade-style basketball shooting games → Get a chance to win a limited edition gold Sixers jersey → Test out the new Jordans → Catch a musical performance, and perhaps a celebrity sighting.
10 years later, I would end up in Orlando at another All-Star Weekend, but this time as part of one of these marketing teams.
Things from this side were different: I didn’t necessarily have the city loyalty to get swept up in, even though fanfare was all around me. I was there on business. And as a soldier of the annual pop-up regime, you were there to do your job.
But let’s keep it real, bro. This is still All-Star Weekend. I’m still a wide-eyed fan. I still love basketball. If there was even a chance you could get close to the stars—even if you had to use your privileged marketing credentials to enable it— there’s no question.
You would still do it.
“Yooo, pssst, there go Melo. He just walked in.”
“They saying LeBron is supposed to make an appearance today at the Nike Store. We should make our way out there just in case.”
“Floyd Mayweather having a party, they saying 50 Cent might show up.”
“Was that Kirko Bangz??”
At some point, this mission-based orientation around the festivities became its own adventure. Once outside the job, there was nothing more fun, or more exciting, than seeing how close you could get to the stars. They were all here, in one place.
Long story short, that mission came to fruition. Through a friend who worked at AMEX at the time (good looks Peter!!), me and my friends Ellington & Vinny lucked out on some box seats to not only the NBA All-Star Saturday Night festivities (Dunk Contest, 3-Point Shootout), but we also got tickets to the actual 2012 NBA All-Star Game.
Not a game.
Not just any game.
But THE All-Star Game.
I got to watch the 24 best players in the world hoop against each other, in person, with very little distance. It was beyond inevitable. It felt ordained.
I got to see D-Wade hoop against Kobe, in the same game that Lebron was going against Kevin Durant. From where I was sitting, I got to see the small, micro-interactions between these megastars that highlighted just why the NBA’s core product sparkled so much. I got to see the jovial trash talk, and assess the vibe in the room amongst hooper royalty. Stuff you could never see anywhere else.
Shit was crazy.
So crazy.
But it was also kinda sexual.
That’s because growing up, there was an organic naughtiness to All-Star Weekend. In 2002, as a kid going to Philly’s pop-up events, I didn’t know this consciously. But I acted on it. And the subsequent years: same thing.
There was a lack of monogamy to the weekend that made it—elegantly so—scandalous.
You really weren’t supposed to see two players from division rivals playing on the same team, let alone interacting. But that fantasy is what made the weekend exhilarating. Because what those marketing teams—tasked with organizing the NBA’s grand product into a 3-day carnival—may or may not have known is that the taboo was the engine. It was the secret ingredient that pulled fans like me closer to the fray.
That secret ingredient, for instance, was Vince Carter stepping out on Toronto. His Raptor teammates—his season-long diehard partners—for a moment… they did not exist. And Allen Iverson, ambassador to our blue-collar 76er emblem, was actually stepping out on Philadelphia: to spend a night with Vince Carter. T-Mac wasn’t supposed to have this much fun spending the weekend going right at Kobe Bryant’s neck, right? How was Orlando supposed to feel?
The All-Star Game, at it’s core, was an invite-only, star-hooper orgy.
A momentary break from the franchise contract.
Enabled once every year.
And so:
The 2023 All-Star Game, and all its subsidiary events, was held this past weekend in Utah, one year after a decorated 75th NBA anniversary. And it, like all the previous star-studded weekends, was inevitable.
Except this time, it truly felt like the inevitability was the problem.
It dragged on. It lacked virality. It rehashed narratives all of us NBA fans are overly saturated with at this point. Broadcast jargon felt awkward and calculated, very often. It celebrated milestones so immediately soon after they just happened, and so soon after we already celebrated them. It avoided all the elephants in the room. Most of all, it happened directly following a wild flurry of early-February off-court NBA drama.
And really, the weekend wasn’t even all that bad. It was just clear that it wasn’t the main event anymore. There was barely any buildup. There was even less of a release.
The truth is, this year’s All-Star Weekend appeared far more drab precisely because the looming Player Movement Spectacle—punctuated most recently by the wild ass February 9th trade deadline—has made the steamy, lust-filled, hypothetical off-court player activity far more enticing than the routine, missionary, vanilla on-court player reality.
POLL: With KD on the Suns, are they the favorites?
THOUGHTS? Will Kyrie stay happy playing for the Mavericks?
BREAKING: How many championships will Lebron win with Miami?
THROWBACK: How many rings would CP3 and Kobe have won together?
JUST IN: Do X and Y get along after their split?
As spectators, this constant movement—the ever-revolving jersey swap—has made the local threesome a permanent possibility for us. It might not be the 24 best stars parading around a single city for a weekend, but it could be 3 or 4, cuddling up together under one roof for a lil while.
We’ll take that deal. And we’ve taken it often.
And as players, this constant movement—the power to put on any ol’ jersey—has made legacy chess moves a primary calling for most. You may burn some bridges, but the challenge of architecting your own narrative has been whittled down to protecting your ‘brand’—or rather, your ability to fuck whoever, at any time.
They’ll take that deal. And they’ve taken it often.
But in other words, it means the true orgy will never return.
The annual 3-day celebration of franchise stars from every corner of North America, stepping out on their stay-at-home fanbases to engage in some consensual nasty shit with the other high-profile stars, for all of us to see?
Well, it’s over.
That is never going to happen again.
I guess this hard truth—this loss—has been years in the making, and it’s not exactly traceable. It mixes with notions of player empowerment, and thusly load management; with the influx of media coverage; with the intense visibility of NBA players as megabrands, post George Floyd. All that shit is there.
So something’s broken, right?
Hell if I know.
Lmao I just wanna feel something again.
Would All-Star Weekend be more exciting with a 1-on-1 tournament? A fight to the death, Gladiator-style?
Sure, but maybe we should let Shams and Woj go first. They are, after all, the real stars of this era.
Does the Dunk Contest need to be revised?
Maybe, but if the NBA outsources the necessary showmanship—a requirement to compete with the juicy off-court drama—to amateur talent, is it still an NBA event?
Are NBA players burnt out from being 24/7 entertainment?
Who knows. But whatever their answer is to this… it’ll prolly be entertaining.
When we’re this close to every micro-interaction between these megabranded stars, as they all rub up against each other in every news cycle, it can be difficult to see what’s what. All that bodily friction can cloud our judgment. It’s hard to know what, or who, comes next.
In some ways, when I was at Jam Session in 2002, miles from the actual stadium and unable to fathom getting a glimpse of an NBA player, I was closer to the true celebration than I ever have been in my entire life. I was closer to my own excitement. There was an authentic buildup. And by the time I sat on my couch to watch the All-Star Game that Sunday night, it was easy enough to revel in the release.
It hasn’t felt the same since.
A lot of questions about what the NBA is actually celebrating at All-Star Weekend will be raised. There will be calls to cancel the weekend altogether. Some imagination will be required. Next year, many new, fresh and even good ideas will be implemented. Like I said, a celebration of the best ball handlers in the world is inevitable.
But that doesn’t mean it inevitably gets you off.
—bgs