My 10 best things about the 2020 All-Star Game
The NBA All-Star weekend took place on last weekend and it was a smash hit. Just about every event was a fun filled lollapalooza and good times were had by all. The game itself was a particular treat thanks to a revised format that most people credit to Chris Paul. As a celebration of the game, I would like to go through my 10 best things about the all-star game, in no particular order. By the way, I watched the All-Star game with my mom – someone who gives the minimum amount of a shit about basketball and who was working on her laptop the whole time – so I got a really good outsider’s perspective.
1. The National Anthem – God bless Chaka Khan. And God bless America. The best part about the singing of America’s national anthem is that for almost every event, whether it’s a high school football game, a regular-season baseball game, or the Super Bowl, it usually sounds the same and usually sounds great. But the All-Star game is just something different. Fergie’s version of the anthem is still the worst, but Chaka Khan (God bless her) was rough. At this point, I’m convinced that the NBA might be actively looking for artists who will butcher it in increasing fashion. My favorite part: when my mom heard that Chaka Khan (God bless her) was singing, she got very excited. She loves Chaka Khan. After the anthem, this happened:
PA guy: Give it up for Chaka Khan!
My mom: Do we have to?
God Bless her.
2. Trae Young being a starter – Okay, so this one isn’t one of the “best” things about the All-Star game, it’s just a thing. I’m pissed that Trae Young was a starter. Nothing against him (God bless him), but how in the world am I supposed to believe that Trae Young is one of the 10 best players in basketball right now? It made me realize how much I miss Kyrie and Steph and Klay and Durant and Draymond. Trae missed his first few 3’s and I was really hoping that he was going to go 0-13 or something from 3 and I could laugh all smug-like. Near the end of the first half, though, he hit his first 3.
Damn.
Then he hit a three from half court to close out the first half.
Damn.
3. My mom’s thoughts at the end of the first quarter – I didn’t entirely know what was supposed to happen at the end of the first quarter. I’d read all of the stuff about what was supposed to happen, but that stuff was different and new to my brain and too much new stuff hurts my thinkerbox. My mom had actually had the TNT pregame show on for a while before I got there, so I asked her:
Me: So, mom, what happens now? Do the scores reset or something?
Mom: I don’t give a shit.
Told you.
4. Giannis playing his ass off – shoutout to Giannis, man. Giannis has the skill of a player that’s been in the league for a while, but he also doesn’t have the cynicism and baggage attached to him that comes with being in the public eye for years and years. He’s at the perfect point in his career and I love it and I love him. There’s a lot of talk about how the players don’t really try hard night-in and night-out and how a lot of them on any given night just go through the motions. And yeah, this All-Star game was incredible and we’re all lucky to have watched it, but Giannis was the only dude that was really going for it in the first half. He was playing legit defense and using his Mr. Fantastic arms to score at will. Not that anyone was really trying to stop him.
There was one moment in the second quarter when Giannis missed a windmill dunk because, in Grant Hill’s opinion he was “Too high”, to which Reggie Miller emphatically replied “There’s no such thing as too high.”
My man.
5. Chris Paul throwing down an alley-oop dunk – This makes my list because Chris Paul dunking is usually a historic event, and because when my mom was watching the pregame show, they talked about how Chris Paul is on a plant-based diet. So when he dunked, I exclaimed and my mom, of course, told me “That’s what a plant-based diet can do for you!!” Thanks mom.
6. My mom loving Reggie Miller – My mom actually does give more than the minimum amount of a shit about basketball; she actually likes sports very much. Her favorite 30 for 30 is the one about Reggie Miller and the New York Knicks. She loved the fact that he was a smack-talking Mr. Potato Head and when she found out that he was doing color commentary for the game, she said that she loved him because “He sounded like an excited little kid” the whole time. Click-click, mom. This is your Kodak moment.
7. Chance the Rapper singing Ultralight Beam without Kanye West – Another not-top-10, but it has to go on the list. What the hell? Who let this happen? First of all, it was really cool to hear from all the celebrities from Chicago because – you know – there’s a ton of them. But I did notice before the game when they were all talking about the city that Kanye didn’t get mentioned. Whatever. Maybe he was busy. So then Chance comes out for the halftime show (by the way, this is a pro-Chance blog. I’ll admit that The Big Day was a little icky but idc because Acid Rap and Coloring Book and 10 Day are all so goddamn good that I’ll forgive a bad album. If you don’t like Chance on the whole, you’re a big dumb dumb. There, I said it) and starts doing all of his stuff, then he starts doing ULB and he’s killing it and you’re just waiting for Kanye to come out of nowhere and bring the house down or something and he NEVER DOES!!!! This dude is from Chicago and is one of the 5 most influential hip hop artists of the last 20 years and they don’t bring him out to sing his own song??? Boo, you NBA. Boo, you!
8. LeBron vs Giannis in the second half – After Giannis basically single handedly won the second quarter for his team, you wondered how LeBron and company would respond. Within like 3 minutes of the second half, it was clear that LeBron was taking Giannis’ energy as a personal affront to his throne as the best player on the planet. Giannis, in turn, decided to prove that this is his league and that we’re all going to remember this year as the year Giannis made the leap to “face of the NBA” levels. They went at it, dude. Giannis D’d LeBron up in the post and blocked one of the King’s fadeaway jumpers in a way that made you wonder if you could even recreate Giannis’ insane body proportions in 2K. Then LeBron stripped Giannis when the game started tightening up, then Giannis pulled out a LeBron and pinned LeBron’s layup on the glass in a way that made me want to get Giannis’ last name tattooed on my back like a permanent jersey. Basketball is so cool.
9. Kyle Lowry TAKING TWO CHARGES IN THE ALL-STAR GAME – I don’t know if you heard me when I typed that. Let me repeat myself, *ahem*, KYLE LOWRY DREW TWO CHARGES IN THE ALL-STAR GAME. AND ONE OF THEM WAVED OFF A JAMES HARDEN 3 THAT WOULD HAVE WON THE GAME FOR TEAM LEBRON RIGHT THEN AND THERE. Kyle Lowry is a warrior. He is now on team of guys who I want in an exhibition game that my life also happens to be dependent on.
10. The new All-Star game format - This was absolutely the best and most important part. The fourth quarter of the game was genuinely interesting and authentically exciting. The fact that it was such a close, exciting, new game format that honored the life of Kobe Bryant and was played by the best players in the world made the game truly worthy of being in the conversation among the best All-Star games ever. The only changes that I’d make would be that the winning team has to win by 2 (duh) and to keep it from ending in free throws (double duh). Overall, I was standing in my living room during the fourth quarter being thrilled at the competitiveness, enthralled by the tempers (I need someone to get T’d up next year), and incredibly optimistic about next year. Aaron Gordon might’ve lost, but the NBA as a whole had a huge win.