NBA has turned its All-Star event into just another weekend

There was once a time when it had meaning, stood for something greater. The anticipation, excitement. When the hype was real. When it was called “our” Super Bowl, the Black Super Bowl. Yeah, them days. “Was” and “once” being the fatal words.

The showcase days are over. The beauty, the significance of it all … gone. The time has arrived to painfully make the PSA: The NBA All-Star Game, as we know and love, done.

Not dead, but worse. It no longer has meaning; lost both its sense of excitement and entertainment. “Are you not entertained?” “Not,” the other fatal word. To millions (even die-hard hoop folks) the All-Star Game isn’t joyful to watch or be a part of anymore. Even the pomp and circumstance around it being a special “event,” not close to what it … was once.

All reasons, self-inflicted. The game turned on itself in a way that could almost be considered suicidal if the game wasn’t still physically being played. Player apathy and half-assed engagement no longer play well with people who would rather be creating content than watching — or spending money watching — something fake and uninspiring.

Seriously, what’s the point in an over/under point total of a game set at 320.5 and the game is void of competitiveness and meaning? It’s sad when NBA2K23 comes off as more real than a real game.

Last year’s ASG viewing went from 6.3 million in 2022 to 4.6 million. A record low. The least-watched and seemingly least-cared-about All-Star Game ever. A G.O.A.T. opposite. The first time an NBA All-Star Game television viewing has ever dipped below the 5M viewership threshold. Less than half of the 10.8M it enjoyed in 2003. Even in the pandemic-riddled season — when the NBA “threw together” an All-Star Game that went up against Oprah’s interview with Harry and Meghan — the game drew close to 6 million (5.9M to be exact) viewers.

Even the Saturday Night NBA Showcase that includes the dunk contest, last year hit an all-time low, dropping below 4M viewers for the first time (3.4M, again, to be exact), although its competition that night was the Beijing Winter Olympics.

You’d think Super Bowl hangover should bleed directly into All-Star Weekend engagement where society gets to see the best basketball players on the planet go at one another in a showcase that makes us feel a certain way about the game. Fall in love with it. It’s all set up that way. The seasonal transition from one major sport to the next. Instead, both numbers and interest for NFL’s Super Bowl and NBA’s All-Star Game grow further and further apart. Mostly because the way the All-Star Game is making us feel is the exact opposite of how we should be feeling. Which is on the NBA.

So how does the game, the entire weekend, get saved? When no meaningful superstars (or even the game’s best dunk artists) are in the dunk contest. When no USA vs. World restructuring of the rosters just to make a brilliant-ass idea a reality way sooner-than-later gets put in place. There’s only so much interest the Steph Curry/Sabrina Ionescu single-round three-point shootout is going to generate.

And before you think money is the answer — as in paying the players or winners of the game a stack like the NBA did for the In-Season Tournament — please stop. This is more complex than that. As NBC’s Michael Smith said when he called out the former NBA “midseason classic” for its lack of an elevated or even moderate-level of competitive commitment to the game, “You can not realistically expect players in a day and age in which they don’t take the regular season seriously to take an exhibition seriously.” Sadly, this is the age and today is that day.

The hard truth is, the NBA ASG/ASW as it once was is probably a thing of the past which we may not ever experience again. There’s probably a deeper case study necessary that involves looking into how players’ injuries are killing public interest in the League and how much money they’re making (seven of the top 25 highest-paid athletes in the world in total earnings last year — four in the top 10 — were NBA players, according to Sportico) doesn’t help with that perception and the backlash of how the “wokeness” of the NBA is being covertly held against it to provide samples of the myriad of contextual reasons as to how we actually got to this place. But until then, this singular belief of competitive apathy will be the game’s singular reality. A reality depressing to accept.

There’s the game of basketball, there’s the culture of basketball. There’s competition within the game and there’s the creativity inside the game that separates it from all other sports. The NBA All-Star Game once upon our time was always one of the very few events in the game where all of the above met as one and provided us with that rare occasion in sports when something meaningless can be meaningful. Outside of Kobe’s statue coming to life and playing in the game, the time has arrived to face the All-Star Game’s mortality. Black suit, black hat, black AF1s. Making it just as hard to say goodbye to yesterday as it is to say goodbye to today.