The Indianapolis All Star recovered the classic format, East vs. West, after six years of matches between teams chosen by two captains. The change was thought with the idea of returning to competition, at least fairly. That the All Star Game, the peak of the NBA’s big party weekend, once again had chicha, interest. Some nerve. Commissioner Adam Silver had no problems, therefore, in showing his disappointment when there was not even an iota of seriousness or defense and the score exceeded 200 points for the first time: 211-186. Silver acknowledged that there had been conversations so that things would not be like that and admitted that concessions had been made to the players: shorter presentations, less show at half-time… They also received visits from historical figures (Larry Bird at the head ) who insisted on the same idea. Not at all.
So Silver and the NBA are thinking about the issue again, now that in the regular season a policy of more defense and fewer points has also been installed, records yes, of course, but more sweaty. For the next editions, all on the West Coast (San Francisco, Inglewood, Phoenix) there will be changes, adjustments… whatever is needed. The commissioner made it clear on CNN: “We believed that in Indiana we had an opportunity to go back to the basics, to basketball. It was a great weekend… but it wasn’t a great basketball game. If we had not attended something like this, we were prepared to consider the United States against the rest of the world. But now I wonder, and I think this is the conversation that needs to be had, if this generation of players, with their teams as accomplices because no one wants to play hard in the All Star and no one wants to get injured, only sees this weekend as a break. on vacation, a bridge in the middle of the course.”
For this reason, Silver believes that the key may be to leave the classic game aside: “The three-point contest between Stephen Curry and Sabrina Ionescu, for example, was a great attraction. That says a lot about our game, and I think of this generation: Billie Jean King against Bobby Riggs in tennis… that was called the battle of the sexes, right? This was the opposite. It was, as Sabrina said, just two great shooters challenging each other on the court. So I think that instead of going crazy to create a super competitive game, which I don’t know if it is something that the players and the teams want in any case right now, maybe what we need to do is propose more fun events like that.
“We have to look at different options and turn the weekend into a celebration, a basketball party. Let’s think about the US-rest of the world. I simply think that we are no longer in a position to think that this is going to be a more competitive match. And, furthermore, it is something that we have already seen in other sports,” Silver concludes about that match option that many have proposed since the NBA became a definitively international competition. Since 2018 (James Harden) there has not been an American MVP: two from Giannis Antetokounmpo, two from Nikola Jokic and one from Joel Embiid. In last season’s Best Quintet there was only one American, Jayson Tatum, along with Giannis, Embiid, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic. The Celtics forward also doesn’t have many options this year for MVP. Ahead of him are Jokic (Serbian), Doncic (Slovenian), Shai (Canadian) and Giannis (Greek). And that’s without counting Embiid, who was on pace to repeat when he suffered a knee injury that has not allowed him to reach the 65 games he must reach, starting this season, to win the main individual awards.
It is a tempting option, but it seems that Silver also feels chastened, tired of trying to fix something that may simply not be fixed: “I assume my responsibility as commissioner. I think that by now we should have known what there is with the All Star Game, to have assumed that these are different times.” And he refers to his direct conversations with the players: “It’s not that they say that they already know what the NBA wants and what TNT wants, which is to play hard, but that they stop doing it. It’s more that once they are there, especially the younger ones, they see it as a break, a bridge, a few days of partying to have fun. There are almost 1,300 games in regular seasons that are very hard, and they see this as something different.”
Returning to the Curry-Ionescu challenge, Silver knows that next season another women’s basketball sensation will arrive in the WNBA, a Caitlin Clark called to be a historical star and who may be another perfect profile to integrate into the All Star activities: “The Next is in San Francisco. Curry will be there, and it’s already known that Sabrina is from the Bay as well. They both told me that they wanted to do something like that again, but that they preferred it to be the best of three attempts, that there was too much pressure on just one round. They want to repeat, but I am sure that we are going to integrate more WNBA players. And we are all very happy with Clark’s arrival, of course. There is a lot of talent now in that League.”
Jokingly, he ended the interview with Gayle King and Charles Barkley by acknowledging that the NFL had gotten lucky when Taylor Swift started dating Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce. That attracted enormous attention from a sector that normally does not pay so much attention to professional sports. The commissioner laughed when asked if he would have preferred that the famous singer had started a relationship with an NBA player: “And so much so.”
Follow the Diario AS channel on WhatsAppwhere you will find all the sport in a single space: the current news of the day, the agenda with the latest news of the most important sporting events, the most outstanding images, the opinion of the best AS brands, reports, videos, and some humor from time to time.
2024-03-25 11:33:25
#Adam #Silver #opens #door #United #Statesrest #world #match
