The All-Star Game I Want To See...
I always enjoyed the baseball All-Star game, just for the spectacle as much as anything else. I liked seeing all the different uniforms together, I liked seeing the National League guys, since I grew up watching American League baseball. And the mid-summer classic had history, too. I still remember Fred Lynn belting one off Atlee Hammaker in old Comiskey, or Fernando striking out the side. The NBA All-Star game never really captured my attention. I just never found the pickup and show-boating atmosphere to be compelling. There is not a seriousness to the game that you have in the baseball or football versions (and the football version is hopelessly irrelevant anyway).
But there will be an interesting subplot this year, as Sam Smith writes on ESPN today. Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan dislike each other very much, and now they will exist as coach and player. Go read Smith's article; it's short. It's a great nostalgia piece for what the NBA was like in the late '80's, and how Michael had burst onto the scene. You have to go all the way back to 1985 to begin to understand why Jordan's impact has been so huge.
I have to say, I think the NBA All-Star game could be SO much more enjoyable under different circumstances, albeit circumstances we will probably never see. I'm talking about the Grudge Cage Match All-Star game. Basketball as a sport is fundamentally different from baseball, football or hockey. Those are team sports all the way. Although there are certainly individual matchups (batter vs. hitter, wide receiver vs. cornberback, hockey player vs. drunk fan behind bench), you don't get the feeling that those individual matchups happen outside the context of the game. Not so with basketball.
For example: I don't think Roger Clemens has some sort of a pride thing about facing Barry Bonds, and vice-versa. If they face each other in a game, fine, but I don't imagine them getting together on some diamond in the off-season and having it out. Baseball just isn't that way, but basketball is. Jason Kidd and Gary Payton are both point guards from the Oakland area. They grew up, as so many players did, playing very personal and competitive games on playgrounds and in crowded gyms. An awful lot of great basketball players had to COMPETE just to earn their time on the court. You lose, you wait for the next game, and that wait might be a long time. This doesn't happen with pickup baseball or football games. You show up, you have a practice, you go home. Basketball players often play for their very survival as basketball players. If there are only so many courts, you have to win to play. That changes the dynamic completely.
Basketball is personally competitive, and the players take pride in the skills they have, and that those skills are better than the next player's. I have a vision in my mind where the best players get together in a gym somewhere, away from the cameras, away from the coaches, and they really just go at it. No holds barred, no consideration for the rotation or minutes. Just a hard game between 10 guys. They could divide up teams in a variety of ways: KG always talks about being from the South, and how he likes other guys from the South like Shareef Abdur-Rahim, or Karl Malone. You could get a pretty mean Bay Area team together. Let the Croations bring their stuff in, too. No money on the line, and no endorsements. Nothing but bragging rights and pride about where they are from, and the kind of game they play. And to a lot of these guys, that means a heck of a lot. Winners stay on the court, losers go home. Last team standing wins. Anybody who has spent time in an inner-city public gym knows that you can see some CRAZY stuff in those games, both in terms of the skills and the desire to simply keep the court and keep the right to have the upper hand when the talk starts to fly. And it will fly. Imagine what that gym would be like with a bunch of NBA players in it, out to prove something about their country, or their town.
That's the All-Star game I want to see.
2:39:39 PM 
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