Marlon Scott
Senior Staff Writer
Every professional team sport has some kind of All-Star game. Theoretically, this game showcases the best players of the sport hand picked by a combination of “experts” and fans.
A game featuring the best a sport has to offer should be a fan favorite.
However, if you ask most sports fans, most sports fail to produce an All-Star game worth watching. Ironically, the smaller, least popular sports do the best for reasons I will explain later.
First, I want to give credit to the sport that puts on the best All-Star experience, the NBA.
Without question, the NBA’s All-Star weekend is the best example of a sport’s best players showing their prowess and promoting their sport to fans.
Where does the NBA succeed and other sports fail?
One major advantage for the NBA is the number of All-Stars it has to choose. Both football and baseball have huge team rosters from which only dedicated followers of the sport can actually name more than one person for each position.
The basketball All-Star team consists of two, 12 men rosters. Only five on each team are starters and each position is interchangeable.
Every year some fan favorite gets left out of an All-Star game. It’s a flaw of the system that gives everyone something to talk about. The only exception is sports with only a few stars fans want to see. Smaller market sports don’t have any problem making sure the few players their fans want to see make the All-Star game.
However, the NBA compensates by featuring multiple events for more players to participate in. A celebrity game, dunk contest, three-point shootout and skills challenge are just some of the events besides the All-Star game fans can watch their favorite players participate in during NBA All-Star weekend.
Some argue the other games are not entertaining. I would watch the dunk contest over a home run derby or a kickers challenge every time.
Finally and most importantly, the NBA All-Star game features the best of what people want to see in a basketball game.
In baseball, favorite pitchers have to watch their pitch count and batters may be tired from the home run derby. Remember when the baseball All-Star game ended in a tie?
The football Pro Bowl is great for quarterbacks and wide receivers. Linemen are playing patty cake and the defense has a gentlemen’s agreement not to hit too hard. You will never see a Pro Bowl in which Ray Lewis and Troy Polumalu turn Dallas Clark into a tight end sandwich coming across the middle at the same time Jared Allen body slams Phillip Rivers just as he releases a pass.
Conversely, in the NBA All-Star Game Sunday, Feb. 14, I watched Jason Kidd and Steve Nash on the same team running full speed while dribbling behind there back with both hands and then make a no-look pass to Dirk Nowitski who drained a 3-pointer from five feet behind the 3-point arc.
In response, Derrick Rose weaved through four players and tossed a 30 foot alley oop to LaBron James who threw down a two-handed reverse jam that shook the seats of over 100, 000 people in attendance. The final score was 141-139.
Instead of wondering when your favorite football players are going to play football at half speed or if the guy who won the Home Run Derby is going to announce he was on steroids five years from now, watch an All-Star game where players are having fun.
The NBA has a winning formula and they are improving it every year.
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