The NBA All-Star Game

This column appears in the February 19th issue of The DePauw.

Being watched by an NBA record 108,713 fans, you would think the NBA All-Star game was a pretty big deal.

You’d probably be wrong.

The NBA All-Star game traditionally has been a successful one. The stars roll in, put on a point scoring display, throw in a few dunks and alley-oops to excite the crowd, and then leave to a standing ovation. It happens almost every year.

Add to that the excitement of the Slam Dunk Contest and the Three-Point Contest, and you really have yourself a weekend.

Usually.

For whatever reason, the 2010 NBA All-Star game didn’t live up to previous editions of the event. The game was played with the build-up of the MLB All-Star Game, but the enthusiasm and excitement of the NFL Pro Bowl.

Maybe it was the massively oversized arena, Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, removing the “buzz” element from the crowd. (On that same note, who decided it would be cool to play a basketball game with some spectators like a mile away from the actual game?) Maybe it’s an indication of the greater sports movement away from All-Star Games and exhibition contests in general. (After all, in the grand scheme of things, this game means absolutely nothing.) Maybe we just don’t like sports as much anymore.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s a bright neon-colored sign showing us the future of sports. Showing us where our games are headed, and where our athletes are going. Maybe it was a sign of the massive corporate influence on any and all marketable athletes in the world today. Maybe it was a sign that gimmicky, fan-friendly events like the Slam Dunk Contest (with this years’ being quite possibly the least entertaining dunk contest ever) and the Three-Point Shootout just don’t excite us anymore.

Maybe, it’s a sign that the game is no longer enough.

The game, by itself, has lost its appeal. And this isn’t just basketball, or all-star games, or any single specific sport or event. It is the world of sports as a whole.

It’s not enough to watch the competitors against one another. It’s not enough to witness the beautiful act of a perfectly executed pass, or a science-defying pitch, or a thunderous tackle. We need more. We need video games, we need celebrity, we need scandal, and above all else, we need money. We live in a society where we always need more.

All of a sudden, for some reason, watching an NBA player dunk a ball with no one else on the court isn’t enough. Just like watching a baseball player hit home runs in batting practice and an NFL receiver catch an uncontested pass isn’t enough anymore, sport itself is falling behind the rapidly changing fan base. What’s important now isn’t who wins in the box score, but who cleans up in the bottom line. It’s a sad metaphor for the rest of society.

So what comes next?

When the gimmick stops working; when the game itself becomes the gimmick, where do we go from here? Will the next All-Star game feature special celebrity substitutions? Headband cameras for the folks at home? Playboy models as the coaches? If you think this is too farfetched, what can possibly be more crazy then throwing 100,000 people in a giant room to watch 10 guys bounce a ball around for an hour or two?

But this is why sports works. Because for every single person that reads this column; for every single person that says “it was better the way it used to be”; for every single person that claims sport is dead; there is a passionate fan out there watching. While the owners and perhaps even the players approach sports differently in today’s world, the underlying principle of sports for enjoyment will always be hidden there somewhere. For every celebrity sitting courtside Sunday who didn’t know Kobe Bryant from the referee, there was a fan sitting in the upper deck, with their binoculars, taking in every moment as if it were their last.   

You never know what’s going to happen next. For better or worse. It’s simple, and yet so confusing at the same time.

And that’s just the way we all want it.

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