2022 NBA All-Star Weekend in Review
A Peloton instructor providing memorable hoops highlights and a hip-hop artist knocking down a sui generis 4-point shot. A would-be Rookie of the Year winning the MVP in a game against other explosive young guys culled from both the NBA and the NBA’s home for emerging talent, the G League. A hometown squad showing off their skills in winning fashion for Cleveland. The self-proclaimed best shooter among big men winning a competition waged from beyond the arc. A dunk contest featuring Timberland product placement. A co-occurring Verzuz battle based on basketball highlights courtesy of two legends. Plus an All-Star game that showcased the skill set of the greatest shooter of all time, that featured a halftime ceremony honoring the players selected as the 75 greatest of all time, and that concluded with a game-winning shot in Cleveland from the man who helped the hometown Cavaliers win their first championship six years ago.
The jam-packed 2022 NBA All-Star weekend might’ve had some lows, but it also reminded fans just how high this game can go. In my highly selective recap that follows, I review the major events that took place over the course of three days, and focusing on what seemed most salient and exciting to me in hopes I can convey just what could’ve been better and why what resonated.
Ruffles All-Star Celebrity Game
All-Star weekend action started with a bunch of famous people playing basketball.
Olympic Gold Medalist in the high jump, Gianmarco Tamberi, would’ve won the celebrity game spirit or hustle award were that an actual honor. Sprinting up and down the court and nearly jumping out of the gym on several occasions throughout the game, Tamberi’s energy seemed to energize the team coached by NBA icon Dominique Wilkins. After a teammate missed a three-point attempt, Tamberi had a running put-back dunk toward the end of the second that ignited the crowd and earned him celebratory chest slaps from Crissa Jackson, a basketball trainer and influencer who’s played for the Harlem Globetrotters.
For her part, Jackson added a little razzle-dazzle to the game with a behind-the-back pass to Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, one of the bigger men in the game; he threw it down, of course. With under six minutes to play, as the camera looked away, Jackson also got the ball up the court to Garrett for another dunk.
Jackson’s teammate, rapper Jack Harlow, let fans know he can hoop. He played solid defense against the 6’3” two-time WNBA sixth woman of the year, Dearica Hamby, preventing what would’ve been a layup in transition on one possession – though Harlow might’ve gotten more than just ball on the play. The forward for the Las Vegas Aces also admittedly had to strike a difficult balance in the celeb-filled contest between playing like a professional and not embarrassing the opposition.
Harlow did more to prove he’s not only a “Killer” on the mic and in the booth, but also on the hardwood. He drained the special “Ruffles Ridgeline 4-point shot” added to the celebrity game. In shooting and making his shot like that, Harlow more or less materialized what he had rapped about previously: “On the futon, I'ma give her that penis / When this shit's done, I'ma fill up arenas / Ooh, like Gilbert Arenas / Shoot my shot, I'm still with the demons, ooh.”
He followed that shot up by taking the rock to the rim in “unorthodox” fashion, as NBA champion Kendrick Perkins remarked. The hip-hop artist who’s also rapped that he’s “got options” and that he can “pass that ***** like Stockton” – referring to the former point guard for the Utah Jazz, John Stockton, who holds the NBA record for career assists and who was recently named to the NBA’s top 75 list for the league’s 75th anniversary – showed he can facilitate too. Harlow delivered a nice dish to Garrett for a one-handed slam at one point and found Tamberi for a two-handed slam in transition.
Ultimately, it was Peloton senior instructor Alex Toussaint who took home the Ruffles Celebrity Game MVP. All that cycling no doubt helped his conditioning, which enabled him to consistently ‘wow’ the crowd in Cleveland. His in-and-out dribble drive into a Euro step and a one-legged mid-range jumper made waves. To steal the show, he also stole the ball and then executed a spin move to evade an opponent in the back court; on the offensive end, he laid it up on the left side of the basket over Harlow. Bill Walton, the 6’11” center who went from winning two NCAA championships with John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins to winning two NBA championships and one NBA Finals MVP, coached Toussaint’s team and kept his master of indoor aerobic exercise in for much of the game, enabling them to get the win, 65-51.
Clorox Rising Stars Mini-Tournament
The Clorox Rising Stars mini-tournament featured four teams comprised of 12 NBA rookies, 12 sophomores and four members of the NBA G League Ignite.
Jalen Suggs, a 20-year-old, 6’5” shooting guard for the Orlando Magic who played for James Worthy’s squad, gifted fans with a 360-degree dunk before his team succumbed to other young talent.
The team coached by Rick Barry prevailed in the end, thanks in part to the legendary small forward’s decision to draft a roster based on a principle of “diversification,” as he put it, and no doubt thanks to acquiring Cade Cunningham, the 6’6” rookie point guard out of Oklahoma State who now suits up for the Detroit Pistons.
Throughout the Rising Stars exhibition, we witnessed Cunningham pass the ball only to get it back and hit a three-pointer toward the close of the final game. He followed that up with a drive and a baseline pass to fellow rookie Franz Wagner, who was fouled on the ensuing play. Wagner was entitled to two shots at the line, but he knocked down his first from the charity stripe to help Team Barry take home the title. The anti-climactic finish from the foul line notwithstanding, the mini-tournament gave guys a chance to show what they can do under the big lights.
“We had to come out and prove ourselves,” Cunningham said afterward.
AI and T-Mac Verzuz
As the Friday night All-Star events were underway, another match-up between NBA icons took place in Cleveland. Although it wasn’t formally part of All-Star weekend, it probably should’ve been, which is why I’m going to devote ample space to recounting what went down in this first-of-a-kind competition.
Allen Iverson, one of the guards named to the NBA’s top 75 list, brought the top highlights from his playing career to the first-ever basketball-themed Verzuz battle, an arena hitherto reserved for artists in or adjacent to the genre of hip-hop. It’s fitting that AI appeared in the first Verzuz of this kind, given how he helped bring the culture of hip-hop to the NBA, transforming basketball culture in the process.
For this inaugural NBA-based Verzuz competition, Iverson squared off against Tracy McGrady, a two-time NBA scoring champion drafted out of high school shortly after Iverson entered the league back in the nineties.
Rapper Fat Joe and Shaquille O’Neal, widely regarded as the most dominant big man to play the game, were both on hand and on stage to oversee the highlights, which were shown periodically in between a lot of compelling commentary and conversation.
“I was Shaquille O’Neal in another size,” Iverson said on stage. “That’s what I was. He was the most dominant big man. I was the most dominant little man. Straight up.”
But before he could even finish saying the above, Shaq corroborated his claim.
“Yes you were,” O’Neal added.
While on stage, Shaq mentioned there were four guys he enjoyed watching so much that he’d let them cook a bit on the court when he was playing. Iverson was one. T-Mac was another. McGrady’s cousin, Vince Carter, was also mentioned, as was “White Chocolate,” the nickname point guard Jason Williams – a.k.a. “J-Will” – garnered during his NBA career.
During the Verzuz battle, both AI and T-Mac said they never practiced the specific moves that made highlight reels. Rather, they just executed in the flow of the game. Interestingly, Williams, one of those players Shaq liked to watch, no doubt because of his resplendent passing – and the man’s oeuvre of dimes does include the “elbow pass” he wowed arenas with on occasion – said in an interview that he spent hours in the gym coming up with and perfecting most of the basketball wizardry he brought to the game.
From a veritable smorgasbord of career highlights, Iverson made sure to include video of his famous crossover against Michael Jordan circa March 1997. Not quite half an hour into the Verzuz, video resurfaced of AI, who’s barely six feet tall, dunking on Marcus Camby, a former Defensive Player of the Year who stands nearly a foot over Iverson. He also treated fans to a throwback All-Star performance from 2001 when he caught a pass with his left hand, mid-air near the baseline from a spot behind the backboard, and then got off a nothing-but-net shot before landing.
“I still watch my old shit. I’m old,” the 46-year-old retired hooper admitted in self-deprecating fashion during the Verzuz challenge.
Iverson’s “iconic moment” shown at the end came from the Philadelphia 76ers NBA Finals game against the Los Angeles Lakers in 2001, during which he made a jump shot and LA guard Ty Lue fell backward and tripped, leading to the Sixers star player stepping over the opposing player as he moved to get back on defense.
As AI explained on the “All the Smoke” podcast in 2020, he doesn’t particularly care for the play now.
“I don’t like it because I love him,” Iverson said on the show.
The two recently appeared in an advertisement for TikTok together. Lue is currently in the conversation for coach of the year given how much he’s done with a depleted Clippers team still missing perennial All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.
Not to be outdone by The Answer, as Iverson came to be known, McGrady curated his own collection of fantastic moves and finishes from yesteryear. At about the halfway point, McGrady unveiled tape of him demonstrating the move you might see someone pull out on the blacktop in a pick-up game. That is, he borrowed a signature move from another streetball legend, God Shammgod. McGrady’s highlight showed him dribbling between the legs, then throwing the ball forward and out to the left with his left hand as his stance faced in that direction before he quickly collected the ball with his right hand and dribbled in the other direction, stepping into a jumper.
His highlights also included a version of something that he, along with AND1 legend and YouTube hooper Grayson “The Professor” Boucher, helped popularize. Around 47:40 into the video of the Verzuz battle, footage from February 2006 showed T-Mac holding the ball with his back to the basket and to his defender, a young Shaun Livingston, a native of Peoria, Illinois, who was drafted out of high school in 2004. As an aside, that’s also the year I graduated from high school in Greenville, Illinois, and it’s the last year the NBA allowed guys to declare for the draft straight out of 12th grade. T-Mac, who was drafted out of high school seven years prior – and who, like the 6’7” Livingston, was long at 6’8” or maybe 6’9” and could really handle the ball – dribbled the rock behind his back in front of the younger player, collected it and turned around into a smooth fadeaway jumper.
T-Mac’s “iconic moment” at the end had me reminiscing about a game I watched in real time as a college freshman from my Florida Avenue Residence Hall dorm room on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus circa December 9, 2004, which also happened to be my late mother’s 47th birthday. For his final exhibition, McGrady had them roll the tape of him scoring 13 points in under 35 seconds to secure an incredible comeback win for his Houston Rockets over the defensively-minded San Antonio Spurs.
As the evidence suggests, T-Mac could pour in the points, especially under pressure. In his prime, McGrady was arguably the greatest scorer the game has ever seen.
Understanding that, The Answer asked an apropos question about T-Mac during their Verzuz battle.
“How the fuck is he not top 75 all-time, though? For real,” Iverson said. “Who doin’ the voting? Who? They need to test them people, man.”
Never one to back down, AI didn’t let up or pull any punches.
“It’s fucked up,” he said about T-Mac being inexplicably omitted from the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team. “Hey look, if you look at that body of work, and all the things he done did for our league, it’s a … slap in the face with a Shaq hand, ya know what I mean? For that man not to be … You can’t name 75 players better than Tracy McGrady, man.”
Indeed you cannot. The NBA shot callers who compiled the #NBA75 list maybe assumed they could, but basketball fans know what’s up.
McGrady and Iverson were two of the most awe-inspiring NBA greats to watch in the early-to-mid 2000s.
As another aside, the T-Mac signature shoe from Adidas was my favorite sneaker to wear in high school, as it had a wider, comfortable fit that accommodated my fat forefoot. In between my sophomore and junior year of high school, just prior to the season in which McGrady won his first scoring title, I ran somewhere between 15 and 20 miles in those sneakers in one long slog. For the first few miles, it was like running on clouds; the remaining miles resulted in blisters and required sustained effort to shuffle my feet in the relatively heavy shoes made more for jumping and cutting on a basketball court, less so for feats of endurance.
At any rate, T-Mac’s game left an indelible impact on me and on the game of basketball. His Verzuz match-up with Iverson exposed fans to a concept NBA All-Star planners would do well to formally incorporate into the weekend of festivities going forward.
Skills Challenge
This Taco Bell-sponsored event kicked off the Saturday night action. In previous years, this competition pitted individual players with multifarious skill sets against each other. For 2022, the NBA made it a team venture, which I appreciated. Despite confusing rules, this format has potential.
Three three-person teams competed. The team of rookies included the 6’9” point guard from Australia, Josh Giddey, along with Scottie Barnes and the aforementioned Cade Cunningham. The Antetokounmpo brothers – the reigning NBA champion and Finals MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, his brother and Milwaukee Bucks teammate Thanasis Antetokounmpo and Alexandros Antetokounmpo who plays for the G League’s Raptors 905 squad – united to form another team. The hometown team that won the challenge for Cleveland consisted of 6’1” Darius Garland – a point guard who’s been compared to two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash – 6’10” center Jarrett Allen and 7-footer Evan Mobley who can play the four and the five position.
In the initial phase of the event, Giddey adroitly drained mid-range and three-point shots in alternating succession.
For the Antetokounmpos, Giannis started strong with a big long-distance bucket but then sort of faded. “I think he ran out of gas,” Reggie Miller said as part of the broadcast commentary.
Evan Mobley scored 18 points for the Cavs team and sank several shots in a row. Garland followed that up by making his first shot from deep worth five points – from the spot where Damian Lillard, a still-young 31-year-old sniper with handles who somewhat surprisingly made the 75th anniversary team over McGrady, pulled up to drain a game-winning shot over Paul George in the 2019 Western Conference. Gliding back and forth between two spots on the floor, Garland went on to make multiple shots worth three from atop the key. He also made two more of those five-point grenades thrown from long-range, giving Team Cavs the win in that portion of the challenge.
In the passing portion of the challenge that followed, the rookies bumped into each other a bit as they tried weaving in and out, but that didn’t stop Giddey from dropping a number of artificial dimes into the target. Garland made a left-handed pass from the middle of the court, from the bottom of the key, just outside the restricted area for Team Cavs, but they didn’t accumulate as many points as the other two teams. Giannis helped lead the Antetokounmpos to tie with Team Rooks, which officials settled by giving the nod to Team Antetokounmpos for completing more outlet passes.
The team relay round of the skills competition had players shooting over moving windmill obstacles flashing potentially distracting lights.
The relay round obstacle course was neat, but I can’t help but wonder if the Skills Challenge could be tweaked so as to put team members together on the floor to execute collaborative elite-level plays, maybe even over and against live defenders. It’s an idea, anyway. If nothing else, the set shots included in the relay should probably have been worth something as opposed to just expediting a player’s movement onto the next part of the relay. A reduction in total time elapsed for the relay for each shot made on the first attempt or some such might’ve properly valued the skill of shooting in tense situations.
During the relay, rookie Scottie Barnes showed off a cool-looking, albeit unnecessary, in-and-out crossover dribble against a stationary mock-defender obstacle in his way, and he finished his relay run with a nifty 360 dunk. Team Rooks won that round.
A tie-breaking shot determined which two teams advanced to the final round. Garland hit the mark on his second attempt and Team Cavs advanced.
Then, his teammate during the regular season and for this All-Star event, Evan Mobley, made his first shot from halfcourt to bring home the Skills Challenge title for Cleveland.
3-Point Contest
I tend to prefer this shooter’s competition over the oft-hyped dunk contest during All-Star weekend. This year’s 3-point shootout featured a deep field on paper. My picks didn’t do so well. The Chicago Bulls athletic wingman Zach LaVine, a two-time slam dunk champion who last season averaged almost 42 percent from three-point territory, didn’t make the second round. Fred VanVleet, the first-time All-Star and formerly undrafted player who’s now running the point for the Toronto Raptors, got off to a poor start, hitting the side of the backboard on his first shot, before rallying a little and reminding everyone he usually has range. To be fair, it’s worth acknowledging, VanVleet recently got engaged, so he’s got a lot going on in his life these days. Trae Young, an ace shooter with shades of Steph Curry in his game, made six of his last eight and his final shot early on. After advancing, he also got going late, but it wasn’t enough.
Luke Kennard, 25, a left-handed guard for the LA Clippers who grew up in Ohio, shot well enough to earn the highest first-round score among all participants in the contest. Doing his best to keep the ‘Cool Hand Luke’ nickname alive, with apologies to the late Paul Newman, the 6’5” guard who shoots just over 42 percent from three-point land for his career, tied for second with Young after the final round.
Karl-Anthony Towns, the 6’11” first-overall pick of the 2015 NBA draft who it turns out was born exactly 10 years minus two days after me, triumphed in the end to take home the shooting title.
“This is how you become known as the best big man shooter ever,” Dwayne Wade, one of the guards named to the 75th anniversary team, said about Towns and his performance as part of the broadcast commentary.
One of the greatest shooters of all-time, Ray Allen, presented Towns his award. Seeing Allen bestow the award and hearing famed shooter Reggie Miller provide commentary alongside Wade and others has me wanting to see more retired players in action during future All-Star weekend celebrations, especially given the seeming success of the Iverson-McGrady Verzuz, fresh on my mind.
Michael Jordan, who flew from the Daytona 500 to make a surprise appearance for the 75th anniversary ceremony on Sunday, mentioned maybe only half-joking to Magic Johnson over the weekend that they should play one-on-one. Matching up retired legends for short games of one-one-one or three-on-three, à la Ice Cube’s Big3 basketball league, which pits a number of former NBA players against each other in three-on-three competition, could be just what the NBA needs to make All-Star weekend pop on Saturday nights.
Slam Dunk Contest
When Cole Anthony busted out the Timberland kicks to kick off the historic dunk competition, I was intrigued, especially since his father, Greg Anthony, a former NBA guard turned basketball analyst, held the ball for his son to grab on his way to the rim with those Timbs on – no easy feat, to be sure. Anthony’s two-footed takeoff and one-handed slam wasn’t bad. But by and large, this year’s dunk contest failed to impress fans.
Jalen Green, who plays and dunks exceptionally well for the Houston Rockets, had a few false starts and ended up altering his dunking plans one round.
“He should’ve read the landscape of the room,” Reggie Miller said on air about that.
But then we did see a redeeming, 360-degree, between-the-legs dunk that earned a series of nines from the judges who could at most allot 10 for a slam.
Juan Toscano-Anderson, a 6’6” forward for the Warriors, showed off a 360 dunk going from one side of the hoop to the other, which earned applause from Steph Curry but a less-than-encouraging comment from Miller, who mentioned that an All-Star musical performance got him out of his seat more so than did that dunk. Ouch.
Obi Toppin, who plays for the Knicks, managed an off-the-glass, between-the-legs, back-to-the-rim dunk, minus any thunderous flush.
Sports journalist and basketball commentary aficionado Stephen A. Smith refrained from trenchant criticism on the dunk competition, at least over the weekend, though the criticism was there if you read between the lines of his social media post about the contest. Someone caught George “The Iceman” Gervin, another former player named to the 75th anniversary team, napping during the dunk contest.
Toppin won, and even if the dunks let some people down, he showed he can really get up.
“We just came out here to have fun and put on a show,” he said as part of his response to a question about whether the league should change the order of All-Star events on Saturday night.
All-Star Game
In this year’s All-Star main event, Team LeBron took on Team Durant, in the injured Kevin Durant’s absence.
The introductions for Team Durant highlighted the high-flying Ja Morant, who won the 2020 Rookie of the Year award.
“He is must see TV, especially in the open court,” Miller said about Morant before tip-off on Sunday night.
When the announcer introduced Joel Embiid, the big man in Philadelphia in contention for MVP this season, he said the Sixers standout “dominates the paint, and he leads the league in scoring.”
During the introductions for Team LeBron, the announcer noted that Darius Garland was making his All-Star debut, he referred to Jarret Allen as the man in the middle for the local Cavaliers, he deemed Fred VanVleet “a fierce floor general,” and he noted that Jimmy Butler had become a six-time All-Star. The four-time NBA champion and four-time NBA Finals MVP, LeBron James, introduced as “just a kid from Akron,” received a warm reception from the Cleveland crowd.
Once the game got underway, I wanted to see what we’d get from DeMar DeRozan, a recent addition to the Bulls who is also in the league MVP conversation this season, thanks to his elevated play that has Chicago atop the Eastern Conference standings. After he dished to Nikola Jokić and “The Joker” returned the favor and the ball, DeRozan hit a three-pointer early on. He followed that up with a mid-range shot on the next possession.
“The master of the mid-range, my friend,” MIller said during the broadcast.
Trae Young lobbed the ball to Morant early on too, which led to an awesome reverse dunk.
“He is arguably the top box office draw,” Miller exclaimed after seeing Morant’s athleticism on display again.
A little later, Zach LaVine, DeRozan’s teammate in Chicago, defended him – barely, as one would expect in an All-Star game – but Embiid set a pick so LaVine could evade the defense and drill a shot from beyond the arc.
After LaVine did a 360 dunk with around three minutes left in the first quarter, it had the broadcast crew wishing he would have returned to the dunk contest.
“Where was that last night, D-Wade?” Miller asked his broadcast partner afterward.
In the second quarter, VanVleet, the first undrafted player in an All-Star game since Ben Wallace made appearance in 2006, according to the broadcast commentary, dished to Luka Dončić who hit back-to-back threes.
LaMelo Ball, a showtime-style point guard and, per the broadcast, the fourth youngest All-Star of all-time next to Kobe, LeBron and the original showtime facilitator, Magic Johnson, had a moment where it looked like he was about to fumble the ball. But the apparent butterfingers proved only a ruse. Ball took the rock under his right leg and up for a lob to Dejounte Murray for a dunk in that second quarter.
Later in the second, Curry shot a three over Ball, and then the next time up the court Ball drained a deep three with Curry on defense. Nobody was going to outshoot Curry, however. Soon after, the Golden State guard made a three-point shot from near the logo. Ball hit a corner three a bit after that, and then LeBron James dished to Curry for a corner three in transition on the other end.
“Look how he’s holding that goose,” Miller said during a replay, referring to the gooseneck follow-through Curry’s shooting arm revealed.
Curry finished with eight three-pointers in just the first half.
And before the half ended, Trae Young treated fans to a lob pass thrown to Morant from just past half court. Morant, the alley-oop recipient in that instance, spun around 360 degrees in the air before catching the ball and jamming it through the basket.
His aerial acrobatics abound and, it seems, know no bounds. Morant is pulling off high-flying moves of the sort I used to try on a backyard trampoline, only I think he gets far greater elevation, and he soars through the air with appreciably more hang-time.
The halftime celebration honored the 75th anniversary selections. Seeing so many of those game-changing hoopers, past and present, share the stage was something to behold. But I couldn’t help venting frustration as I watched, remembering Iverson’s comments from Friday night and thinking about how disrespectful it was for the league not to include Tracy McGrady on that honorary anniversary team. T-Mac would’ve looked dapper in the NBA75 jacket that all the players wore during the ceremony.
The list of players announced ended appropriately with the GOAT, Michael Jordan, though I think it also would’ve been appropriate for them to make MJ the penultimate honoree and for them to say Kobe Bryant’s name at the end so fans could simultaneously applaud all of the greats while showing special love to the late Lakers legend whose life ended tragically and prematurely following a fateful helicopter crash in January 2020.
Once the second half was underway, Morant unleashed more explosiveness to entertain the Cleveland crowd.
On a drive into the paint nobody seemed keen on defending, Morant bounced up and inserted the ball into the basket with two hands.
Also in the second half, Curry continued to showcase his unparalleled shooting prowess.
DeRozan drove baseline and kicked it out to Curry for a three from way downtown. Curry followed that up with a shot from the All-Star logo near half court and then another shot from the wing. Curry’s veritable clinic provoked a warm, ecstatic embrace shared by fellow #NBA75 players Wade, Iverson and Miller in a moment of incredulity and elation in between the commentary they provided.
Exciting ball movement led to Curry making yet another three from the corner with under three left in the third quarter.
During the fourth quarter, when Team LeBron and Team Duran duked it out to see which squad could get to 163 points first, Curry hit a high-arching baseline floater, showing he has more than the long ball in his bag.
Curry finished with a 50-piece, just two points shy of the All-Star scoring record. He set a new All-Star record for three-pointers made, netting 16 total during the game. All those daggers from deep helped him earn the All-Star MVP after the game ended.
But before it did, late in that final quarter, DeRozan hit a clutch shot from the elbow, making the second-to-last bucket for Team LeBron, bringing them to 161 points.
As if NBA fans need to be reminded that the Bulls have a dynamic duo capable of closing games, LaVine, DeRozan’s fellow All-Star out of Chicago and opponent in this contest, answered with a three on the other end for Team Durant, bringing the score to 160-161.
Then James, whose teams have won five consecutive All-Star games, made magic in Cleveland again for old time’s sake and for the benefit of the Kent State University I Promise Scholars program.
Off of a DeRozan dish, LeBron hit a turnaround fadeaway jumper for the win.
His game-winning shot helped earn $450,000 for the Kent State I Promise program. Team Durant helped the Cleveland Food Bank take home $300,000 after it was all said and done.
Final Thoughts on All-Star Weekend
Are there elements of All-Star weekend worth trying to improve? You bet. There’s always room for improvement. As alluded to above, I’d love to see more throwback action with retired players in the limelight again. Some of the Saturday night events could be recast slightly, possibly rearranged and perhaps expounded upon.
But the climactic finish that capped off a number of memorable moments over the course of three days underscored how exciting, entertaining and even exhilarating the annual NBA All-Star action continues to be.