I could tell you why you almost certainly didn’t watch the NBA All-Star Game, or why you watched it for only a few minutes and then bounced. Really, though, you already know.
The game has gotten fat. Bloated. Sloppy.
Unwatchable, even with a galactic collection of talent.
And over the past couple of years, the All-Stars themselves have finally given up pretending that either the action or the outcome matters at all. (I mean, they’re right.)
You are not legally required to care about any of that, of course, since it’s not your job. You’re just supposed to create and influence the marketplace by either watching or not watching.
But what happens if holding the broadcast rights to All-Star weekend eventually begins to feel like something a network gets saddled with, rather than something it’s eager to pay good money for?
That question may help explain why NBA commissioner Adam Silver looked like he’d just eaten paste on Sunday night as he presented the winning trophy to the Eastern Conference team after a no-defense-allowed 211-186 shootaround that involved popular players wearing uniforms.
“And to the Eastern Conference All-Stars, you scored the most points,” the Silver Robotron intoned before adding, “Well … congratulations.”
The commish genuinely looked disgusted, but what did he expect? Not only have things been trending in this direction for years (no competition, all open shots, absolutely no fouling or body contract of any note), but the league’s own structure practically screams at the teams — and thus their players — to tank the All-Star Game in the name of stretch-run health.
Which is to say: It’s all about the playoffs.
That’s where the rub lies. The NBA wants its post-season lengthy and lucrative. The league leaves no doubt that the playoffs are where the real money lies, and its more recent bracket renovation involves 10 teams out of a possible 15 in each conference.
Twenty teams — out of 30 — hit the post-season, beginning with the play-ins.
It’s all about bank.
You don’t even have to question that — it simply is. It’s a fact of the business of the NBA. And so Adam Silver can hardly be surprised when the message that goes booming forth through the league’s 30 franchises to their stars is, For God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t go and get yourself hurt in the All-Star Game.
Did you hear LeBron James after Sunday’s debacle? No one is ever going to jump on LeBron when the subject of competitive fire comes up, but in this case, James made it very clear what the big motivation was on All-Star Sunday.
“I think the good thing that came out of tonight was none of the players were injured, and everybody came out unscathed or how they were before the game started,” James said. “So it (a competitive game) is a deeper conversation.”
James noted that while the stars don’t mind the up-and-down style of a defense-free game, it’s not normally in their competitive nature to just avoid guarding an opponent. But the bigger picture — no injuries — won out handily on Sunday.
It’s hard to know where a network is supposed to go with that. Credit the TNT crew with playing things about level — nobody tried to pretend this was anything other than a freestyle show — but there is just such a limited audience for the kind of tripe that was on the court in Indianapolis.
The last two All-Star Games, 2023 and Sunday, are the two lowest-rated in the history of the event. This year’s numbers actually represented a 20% jump over last year, which tells you how low the bar has been set lately. Even the hastily assembled, post-pandemic game of 2021 drew more eyeballs than the last two faux competitions.
Is there a way out of this? The short answer is, not with the game itself, which feels broken beyond repair. But the ratings for All-Star Saturday Night, which included the heavily hyped Steph Curry-Sabrina Ionescu three-point shootout, were up 31% from the year before and equaled the total viewership of the 2023 game itself, which at least signals viewers’ willingness to watch something that is, you know…interesting.
There is still value in having an All-Star weekend. Any time a league can get its brightest stars together under one roof, a massive amount of attention will be paid. It’s actually remarkable, considering the individual popularity of these guys, that they could be the featured players in such a widely trashed game.
Every All-Star game in every sport was originally designed with one goal: Increase positive publicity for the league that sponsors it. In recent decades, the game is also supposed to be a gold mine for the network that broadcasts it, or at the very least not a loss leader.
Now, Adam Silver and his cohorts have to come to grips with the reality that their players, and the people who cut those players’ checks, have no interest in seeing any sort of effort on All-Star weekend that would open the door to an injury, not even a crack. What results, as a broadcast, is a tough watch — and maybe, someday, a tough sell.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
