Got a call the other day: “Scoop, you goin’ to the Bay for All-Star?”
Response: “Naw. Not interested.”
Got stopped on the street earlier this week: “Scoop Jackson. Thought you’d be in San Fran for All-Star. Since you’re here, where are you gonna watch the game?”
Response: “Probably not going to. They’ve turned it all into too much of a circus. It ain’t even about basketball anymore.”
There was a time for many of us when the NBA was the (our) NFL. It could do no wrong regardless of how wrong things got. We held the league down like grandmothers do bad-ass kids when talking to teachers. All NBA, all day, every day. At all cost.
Those days — over. As this year’s waste of another NBA All-Star Weekend arrives, it’s another reminder that — much like with the Democratic Party — there’s serious work to be done. The numbers are down. But more urgently and purposefully, the numbers are being aligned against something greater to make a greater point. Knowing that one will never match up to the other.
The Super Bowl, 127.7M viewers. Luka Doncic’s first game as a Laker (the game that was supposed to be the biggest splash of the season coming behind a trade that was so unbelievable and the fallout so massive, it interrupted the Super Bowl spotlight for almost a week), 2.55M viewers.
The highs and the lows. Something’s gotta give.
So since it’s become what it’s become and the NBA can no longer rely on this weekend (it doesn’t even put the ASG on a broadcast network) to remind the world of what they’re missing out on when they choose to miss out on the NBA, it is imperative that the games leading up to All-Star Weekend and all games after do for the NBA everything All-Star Weekend no longer can.
The sad part is that that part, too, is impossible.
• • •
Got a text from an old colleague who works for the NBA, not happy about the column I wrote last year about the fall of the All-Star Game and Weekend: “So I’m figuring we lost you. You are no longer an All-Star Game fan. Sad. Thought you were a real one.’’
Response: “Don’t hate the writer, hate the game. Why you mad at me? Actin’ like I’m the one who did this to the weekend. You all ruined it yourselves. Plus, my guy, All-Star ain’t even y’alls’ biggest problem.” (Shock emoji followed.)
Truth, especially when it doesn’t come in the form of love, hurts. Especially when it comes from a loved one. And the truth is the NBA can’t keep having trade-deadline drama, social-media trolls and beefs, tunnel walks and $76 billion rights deals saving it. It needs to stand upright and face its three demons — the style of play, the officiating, the injuries — in order to save itself from itself.
Of those three, the officiating is the least of the game’s worries. After having a lesser-than-subpar showing in last season’s playoffs (and calling that out in a column last year didn’t help, trust me), the referee collective across the league seems to have self-checked itself and elevated to a point where its noticeability in deciding the outcomes of games has almost vanished. Even as the playoffs remain the prevailing factor, the game’s game officials seem to have found a nondisruptive whistle-blowing flow this season.
As for the other two, the style of play and players’ inability to stay on the court or appear in games regularly are married to each other with what seems like a titanium-clad arrangement that death ain’t even strong enough to do them apart. Every team, every game, every possession hunting the three-point line like Drake hunting lawyers. Killing the game’s creative vibe. Every non-Ja Morant highlight or shot furthering the game into an abyss of predictability and analytics.
And if anyone really thinks the players’ addiction to missing games isn’t the game’s slow suicide, sophism might be your diagnosis.
Evidentiary: Wednesday of this week, 16 star players out; Nov. 11-14, only four weeks into the season, 21 star players out. Patterns don’t lie. Loss of interest, unpreventable. Situation, urgent as Darius pleading to Nina.
In the past, the NBA used to use All-Star Weekend as its reintroduction and savior. Now it has become a chalked outline of itself and Sunday’s game eulogized long ago by the basketball clergy and coroners who are still thinking of something respectful yet honest to etch on its headstone.
Back in the ’90s, the league had a tagline that left nothing else to be said: “NBA: I Love This Game.” Maybe now that NBC is back as one of the league’s partners (beginning next season), it can bring back that slogan. Even if it is a lie. A broken clock is right twice a day, but it’s still broke.
• • •
Got checked by my bro earlier today: “Word on the street is you opting out of the whole All-Star thing this weekend. Knew you’d soon sell out.”
Response: “Wait, where’d you hear that? I never said that. Whoever told you that, they, they, they lied. I’m all in. NBA, all day, every day. You know me. Fall through the crib on Sunday. Bring the crew, we can all watch the game together.”
Headstone: 01/23/1973 – 02/15/2025. HERE RESTS SCOOP JACKSON. NBA HYPOCRITE.