Last February, for the first time in the history of the All Star Game, one of the two teams exceeded 200 points in a game. Led by Damian Lillard and Tyrese Haliburton, the Eastern Conference won the duel and broke the scoring record in a spectacle that was far from what the league is looking for. And after changing the format back to East versus West for this past edition, the NBA is open to a new idea. One that has floated around social networks, the media and fans for years. A United States against the rest of the world, as confirmed by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
He did so in an interview with NBA legend Charles Barkley on CNN. “We’ve thought a lot about it,” Silver said when asked about the format. None of the recent editions have been competitive enough to sustain a project for more than two or three years, and the league is looking for a solution. One that saves, once and for all, the All Star Game, the final culmination of the all-star weekend. “It was a great weekend, but it wasn’t a basketball game,” Silver said of the lack of competitiveness. a problem they seek to solve by touching something key in the United States: its pride.
After losing three of the eight games in the last World Cup, against Lithuania, Germany and Canada, USA Basketball has decided to send a team similar to the Dream Team to the next Olympic Games, even signing Joel Embiid as an interior. And the feeling is that just imagining a hypothetical defeat against an international team could make the American team take the game seriously. For talent and players, the scales have never been more balanced with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid taking the last five MVPsand the certainty that this year’s winner, be it Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Luka Doncic, will not be born in the United States either. There have never been so many international players at such a high level.
But the problem also lies with the European players. Neither Jokic nor Doncic have taken the game seriously to date, knowing that it is an exhibition friendly. That’s why, Silver could be open to other types of ideas“I think maybe instead of trying to play a super-competitive basketball game, which I’m not sure the teams or the players really want, we should do things differently and make it a celebration of basketball,” he added. The option on the table could be a format where the result is not relevant. “I think we’re past that point where we’re going to play a really competitive game,” confessed Silver, who He gave as an example the contest between Sabrina Ionescu and Steph Curry.
All-Star Weekend is, at the same time, an NBA spectacle and an oasis of rest for the players, those who are chosen and those who are not, during the frenetic regular season. Demanding high competitiveness from the 24 chosen is complicated, and the league itself is running out of arguments: neither money, nor pride, nor defending its own conference is a reason. so that LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and company play another game with the risk of injury. The NBA will find a temporary solution, a patch, before needing a change again, but if the option of playing a United States against the rest of the world is on the table, we at least deserve to see it for a year. Even if it’s a failure.
2024-03-24 06:38:22
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