“To Be Honest, I Didn’t Like It At All” - Trae Young Spoke Nothing But The Truth While Burying The New NBA All Star Format

Ezra Shaw. Getty Images.

Would it be crazy to suggest that the answer to how the NBA can save the All Star Game has been staring at them in the face this whole time? It's not a new format, it's not awkward stoppages for random contests or even longer stoppages to honor a TV show. It's not having Kevin Hart on the mic berating players. 

What the NBA All Star Game needs is simple. It needs basketball. That's it. That's all we want. Nobody is looking for gimmicks or contests or tournaments. We just want to watch the best players in the world play basketball against each other. When we finally get that, we then don't need to stop everything for 20 minutes, killing all momentum that the on the court product had provided. It kills the vibe, it kills the crowd, it kills the player excitement. 

In terms of the actual basketball we got in the games, it was fine. The title game had its moments like these games always do when the sport is actually being played

That's what was so frustrating for everyone watching the festivities, you just kept waiting and waiting for the actual basketball to come back. I'm not sure how Adam Silver figured the best way to get people to watch his basketball league was to show less basketball, but that looked to be his plan

Way, way, way too many stoppages. No flow all night, awkwardness, dead air, it felt like the actual basketball was last on the priority list, and at the end of the day, that's the issue. The NBA needs to make this whole night about basketball, not bullshit. If the whole point is you want players to care and try, maybe stop screwing around with how long you're making them wait in between games of this new format that nobody asked for?

Trae Young sums it up pretty perfectly in my opinion. It seems rather dumb to ask these players to get ready to play, play with energy and effort as if the game matters, and then stop everything for 20 minutes before they then have to ramp back up again. How is that in the best interest of the players and player health? You're just asking for a pulled hamstring or something. Nobody is going to give full effort if they're having 20+ minute breaks all throughout the night. Did nobody think about how quickly the games might go by with the target score when they came up with this idea? Putting health potentially at risk all because you need to kill TV time feels rather insane to me, so it's no surprise players may feel like Young does in that video. It was clear they were over it while it was happening

and the thing is, the tournament idea wasn't terrible! The actual games were fine. Pretty much what you expect in an All Star Game, so that part is whatever. The issue is everything else around the basketball. Putting the game on the back burner for bullshit is the problem. I've always felt like this whole weekend should be about celebrating the game of basketball, and the crazy thing is in order to do that, all you need to do is play basketball! Maybe have some commentators that aren't spending the whole time shitting on players and the product. That may help too I would imagine. 

So Adam, please, figure it the fuck out. The tournament thing is most likely here to stay, so fine. Everyone will adjust and it'll become the norm. But the league has to figure out how to not have so many breaks and stoppages of momentum. The whole night felt like a slog to get through, like nobody had any idea what to do.

Just give us the basketball, it's really that simple. 

P.S.

Make no mistake, Jayson Tatum was robbed of the All Star MVP as well. Such a crock of shit giving that to Curry basically out of sympathy just because the game was in the Bay. Very embarrassing behavior for a league that had a pretty brutal night