1. TOUCHING DOWN IN CHICAGO
This year’s NBA season began with an alarming number of injuries to key players (see Liss, in First, January, 2020), perhaps somehow auguring the devastating losses which were the backdrop for its annual All-Star Weekend.
In the tailwinds of the shocking deaths of former Czar David Stern and Crown Prince Kobe Bryant, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Stern’s successor, carefully steered the NBA Super Jet 2020 (no struggling instrument challenged helicopter this) into Chicago, gleefully embracing his beyond talented team captains Lebron James and Giannis Antetekoumnpo, each with a distinctive winning personality that uniquely expresses his unprecedented package of talents.
All were poised to indulge in the ecstatic three day carnival that All-Star Weekend has become: a genuinely multi-cultural celebration that honors the brilliance of Stern, whose Midas touch massively enriched all lovers of the game of basketball, whatever peeves one might have had with his often crudely autocratic style [1].
Friday night’s “Rising Stars Challenge” was the perfect way to start the festivities, its format of Team World versus Team USA designed to embody the international explosion of breathtaking talent, skill, and athleticism that has cemented Stern’s achievements and heritage. In Stern’s gigantic, spreading, and decidedly woke wake, Kobe Bryant was also shown to be deserving of a reappraisal for those of us who still judge him by his youthful indiscretions and peccadilos.
Bryant’s dedication to his own greatness and to the international scope of the game have amply atoned, in the public eye, for the arrogance that visited contempt and scorn upon early career teammates and opponents, and the sanctimoniousness and hypocrisy with which he escaped prosecution for his early sexual misadventures, purchasing his wife’s forgiveness with an enormous bling-bling.
Magic Johnson’s moving tribute that opened Sunday’s game presented a version of Kobe that one could not help but love.
Modeling joyous mourning as only he could, Johnson was equally eloquent and moving in talking about Stern’s having saved his life by allowing him to play in the 1992 All-Star game when he had just been diagnosed as HIV positive.
And it is entirely fitting that the genial Adam Silver be at the wheel, steering his enormous international spacecraft through the storms and financial losses that derived from the NBA’s not reacting more censoriously to Houston Rockets General Manager Darryl Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong, resulting in the loss of what Silver estimates to have been hundreds of millions of dollars of business in China.
Silver’s aircraft found a safe harbor in Chicago, where this year’s celebration took place, arguably the perfect venue for it all. Chicago: home to Barack Obama, Michael Jordan, Isaiah Thomas [2], Anthony Davis the just retired Dwyane Wade; endless, it seemed.
2. YOUNG GUNZ, LONG SHOTS, AND SLAMMERS
The Rising Stars game featured two starters in Sunday’s Big Boyz game, Trae Young and Luke Doncic, as well the outsize talents of rookies Ja Morant and Zion Williamson. Morant was worthy of an all-star spot himself, and Zion would certainly have been playing Sunday, had he not been injured for most of the season, thus leaving Morant to be a lock for Rookie of the Year honors [3]. Though the “game” degenerated at the end into a spontaneous unscripted dunk contest, it is a great showcase, not only for all-stars chosen (Doncic and Young; both starters) or close to being chosen (Morant and Zion), but also rookies who may not get great exposure, either because they are not yet getting much playing time, or because they toil for small market franchises getting scant media attention.
Saturday’s Skills Challenge event, however carnival like, provided a laboratory for showing how much the game has changed: big men (“bigs”) now are required to develop diverse skill sets [4]. Saturday’s winner Bam Adebayo is the perfect illustration: a muscle-bound, largely skill-free Big at Kentucky who had a disappointing rookie season, Bam has become a multi-skilled force, averaging a double double, and showing a degree of versatility not imaginable for him just a year ago.
A slight format tweak in the three-point contest produced perhaps the ideal winner: Bahamian Buddy Hield. Could marketing have constructed a better winner? A flashy cool guy with a winning smile; a success story after initially struggling in the big time; island dude no less, in this chewy diversity fest. The dunk contest was its usual spectacular cameo, this time resulting in a dramatic two man duel, as well as its usual complement of spectacular safe flying.
3. THE “GAME” ITSELF
The still-new format (in its second year) of captains choosing teams, replacing the traditional East-West divide [5] provided the opportunity for another international twist when Giannis Antetekounmpo made Joel Embiid and Pascal Siakim his first two choices because of their common African heritage. Both are from Cameroon, whereas Giannis is from Greece, but of Nigerian parents, whose parental nutritional habits might be worth studying.
There was an ingenious new scoring format: each quarter was a mini-game (with $100,000 going to the winning captain’s designated charity) but individual quarter scores were also cumulated, with a playground style clock-less fourth quarter in which the ultimate victor was to be the team that reached a final score determined to be 24 (Kobe’s number) points above the third quarter leader’s total.
This seemed a good way to perk play up a bit, but the idea remained untested in the first half, when a 53-41 first quarter and a 51-30 second failed to create excitement, except for a half court shot by Trae Young to end the first half.
Half time was for tallying up the totals, in an attempt to resurrect interest in what was turning out to be a desultory effort. Team Giannis led 92-83. Kawhi Leonard had 25, Giannis 21, with Lebron looking simultaneously dominant and above the fray. A competitive third quarter ended tied (41-41), making it 133-124, making 157 the target score to win.
With this limit set, the level of play changed radically. At 140-136, Team Lebron went to its best lineup. Antetekounmpo promptly blocked James’ jumper, and from then on, James ramped up his intensity to an almost frightening level.
The score evened. Kyle Lowery started taking charges, but, with the intensity affecting him, began missing lay-ups. Guys missed free throws. Embiid was breathing heavily, but they were going to him inside. Might someone get hurt?
154-153. Three points needed to win. In effect epitomizing absolutely everything, Giannis pinned Lebron’s layup. The call was overturned in favor of the block being ruled good. So James went to a long three to win it, but missed. Harden was then called for a charge on Lowery, nullifying his three pointer that would have won it. Lebron drove the lane and dunked. Embiid bullied James, and got two free throws.
156-155. Next basket wins. James fed Davis, who was fouled by Lowery. An 85% free throw shooter, Davis missed the first, but finished matters; 157-155. $400, 000 went to Chicago Scholars, James’ designated charity. Leonard, that MVP specialist, took home the first “Kobe Bryant MVP trophy.” Team James had won by taking the fourth quarter by eleven points.
4. WHO’S GOT NEXT?
Knowing how to win has never been as important. Can’t we get one of these guys on the ticket with Mike Bloomberg? David Stern would have heartily approved.
TNT took over All-Star Weekend over a decade ago and made it even more of a marketing circus, which I criticized fervently, but the kinks have been ironed out, and the kicks keep on kicking, damn near silencing my curmudgeonly side.
Zion Williamson’s innocently beautiful smile and shiningly awesome talent embodies the outsize scope of the league’s new talent, stupendous to the point that even I will not contend that neither he nor Giannis Antetekounmpo has anything at all on Elgin Baylor.
Notes
1 The sensational ten part television series “Basketball: A Love Story” (see Liss, in FIRST) led me to a serious re-appraisal of my anti-corporate misgivings about Stern.
This seems to have been the onset of a more general softening. I’m the guy who is just now willing to put Lebron on a par with- or above- Oscar, the guy who studied the NBA in regular Garden doubleheaders, meaning that half the eight team league was on display, and ticket prices were not yet at all steep, no less the absurd prices now paid for contemporary wired-up arena events; the old Garden, with its smoke filled mezzanine, was a place where five dollars could get a pair of teenagers terrific seats; for ten, you could bring a third and sit in the loge.
2 Isaiah Thomas is another once-tarnished all-time great who seems to have put whatever turbulence he encountered (with the Knicks and the women’s game) behind him, leaving us with his quintessentially beatific smile; forever young.
3 That’s all right, Zion: Bill Russell endured the same fate when he absented himself from the 1956 early season to play in the Olympics, thereby ceding Rookie of the Year honors to team-mate Tommy Heinsohn, but didn’t leave a whole lot else on the table during a thirteen year career that included eleven titles.
4 “Bigs” now develop great passing skills to feed perimeter three point shooters, whereas guards, when not hoisting up bombs, are more inclined to slash, penetrate, and shoot acrobatic lay ups; or just dunk.
5 Bob Pettit and Kobe Bryant are tied for most MVP’s with four each, but Oscar Robertson deserves inclusion in this elite group of all-star game dominators. When the Big O entered the league, he was quickly named All-Star MVP in his rookie year (1961). In that game, he nearly had a triple double (23/9/14), , as, with team-mates Bob Pettit and Elgin Baylor, he orchestrated a 47-19 first quarter, leading his West team to a record-shattering point total: 153. In his second year, he led the West to another high scoring twenty point win: 150-130. With Oscar palpably changing the nature of the game, the West seemed destined to dominate perennially, but the Warriors moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco, thereby repositioning Oscar’s Cincinnati Royals in the West. Surprise! The West won the next year.
It got to the point where Oscar pretty much decided who he wanted to win the MVP award, and dictated the game’s shape from that perspective. Most notably, when the 1966 game was in Cincinnati, Oscar’s targeted passing got hometown Adrian Smith the award; hardly a perennial all-star, Smith had been chosen to play in replacement of an injured team-mate.