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It’s hard to get excited about the NBA All-Star festivities when the players themselves have presented such strong opposition. But, as we’ve seen with sports around the world over the past year or so, once the whistle or the first pitch is pitched, we tend to put all the stress and worry aside for a while. a few hours to take advantage of the competitive spirit. between the greatest athletes on the planet.
This will be the case again on Sunday, when the Skills Challenge, 3-Point Contest, Slam Dunk Contest and All-Star Game all take place on a compressed schedule to promote the safety of those involved. Despite the initial confusion and disapproval of players for holding an All-Star Game in the first place, most have expressed their joy and gratitude for being selected, and none – at this point – have declined the invitation.
This sets the stage for a starry night that could have everyone claiming this overnight for the rest of the time. Here are five bold predictions of what could be the strangest All-Star “weekend” we’ll ever see.
Players like Mitchell – who has now won several All-Star caps as a 6-foot shooting guard after being selected 13th overall – are fueled by disrespect, and the level of perceived noises pointed to he and the Jazz management are at an all-time high. Just this week, Mitchell was fined $ 25,000 for publicly criticizing the referees for not giving calls to Utah that other big teams in the market are receiving (our Brad Botkin pointed out that the numbers do not exactly support this claim). The referee rant was followed almost immediately by LeBron James and Kevin Durant selecting Mitchell and his jazz teammate Rudy Gobert with the final two picks in the All-Star Draft, with James providing the fact that he never played with John Stockton and Karl Malone. in video games as a confusing reason for his choice.
This is all a recipe for Mitchell to go wild on Sunday. He has a great skill set for the All-Star Game, hitting back 3 steps as effortlessly as he throws highlight dunks. The fact that he’ll be playing against Team LeBron only makes him more likely to go the extra mile to prove he deserves more respect from the domestic public. And if LeBron is standing under the basket at some point when Mitchell has a trail in the paint, James will likely have a business decision to make to avoid getting soaked, literally and figuratively.
2. Bradley Beal’s conversations with other All-Stars will be disproportionate
It’s almost become an All-Star Weekend tradition. A player in the commercial block has a conversation or exchanges knowing glances with another superstar, and suddenly the rumors turn. The flagship name for this season’s deal is Bradley Beal, who the Washington Wizards say will not be traded but is by far the most attractive potentially available star out there. Interactions between All-Stars will be limited due to the compressed schedule, but Beal will surely share a conversation with someone like Stephen Curry, Joel Embiid and / or Jayson Tatum that will inevitably lead to rampant and irresponsible speculation.
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Sadly, we can’t disparage the rumors too much – the last two notable times this has happened, once between Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, and also between Anthony Davis and LeBron James, the stars actually ended up teaming up. . So maybe keeping an eye out for Beal’s one-on-one on Sundays is a worthwhile activity after all.
3. Cassius Stanley will make a name for himself in the Dunk Contest
Stanley is my favorite to win the Dunk contest, but recent history has been that judges don’t always pick the player with the best dunks as the winner (* cough * Dwyane Wade * cough *). But I’ve been smitten with Stanley’s track and field ever since I saw him bang his head on the backboard while throwing a go-oop in the California high school championship game as a rookie. He has become somewhat of a prep legend because of his rebound and continued to show it in his only season at Duke last year.
They’re eyeballs on the edge, and he seems to jump just as high a foot or two, which should increase the variety of dunks he’s able to attempt. Stanley has played exactly 23 minutes this season, so even Indiana Pacers fans might not know who he is at this point. That will change on Sunday with his performance in the dunk contest, which should at least give him a chance to fight Shaquille O’Neal in the next round of “Who He Play For?”
4. The Elam Ending will make us think again
The 2020 All-Star Game was the best we’ve seen in years, and that was largely due to the implementation of the Elam End, where the clock is cut in the last four minutes and the teams are playing. instead with a target score – usually adding eight points to the winning team’s score. This eliminates the need for the relentless endgame fouls that drag out relentlessly every game, even a semi-tight one, and, like baseball, it makes the losing team feel like they’re never really out.
Due to last year’s success, the NBA has decided to return to the Elam Ending for Sunday’s game, which will hopefully lead to another exciting and hotly contested finish. If it works again, it will lead to many questions as to why we don’t use the Elam ending for every basketball game, a topic our James Herbert recently discussed with Nick Elam himself. The ending makes so much more sense than what we currently do at nearly every level of basketball, so it will be interesting to see if another use of it in the All-Star Game causes the league to consider breaking down. withdraw from tradition and implement Elam. Ending full time at some point.
5. The 3 point contest will be more exciting than the Dunk contest
The main All-Star event on Saturday night has always been the Slam Dunk contest, with mixed results over the past two decades. We’ve had epic clashes between Dwight Howard and Nate Robinson, and Aaron Gordon and Zach Lavine’s 2016 masterpiece. But we also had a few unmitigated disasters, like Chris “Birdman” Andersen taking about 25 minutes to complete one of his dunks.
This year’s Dunk contest has a couple of things going against it. First, the list of candidates – despite my affinity for Cassius Stanley – doesn’t really boil the blood. Second, the contest is at halftime of the All-Star Game, like a scrum between 9-year-olds played in the background as fans fill up on nachos and 64-ounce soda.
The 3-point contest, on the other hand, is made up entirely of All-Stars, including Stephen Curry. Even with Devin Booker retiring from the festivities, you get another All-Star to replace Mike Conley. 3-point shooting has become paramount in the modern NBA, and the league will continue the ride it started last year by adding two shots six feet behind the 3-point line, depending on the distance from which most of the participants. launch regularly during games.
There is almost always some drama heading towards the last rack of almost every round, and these are the entrants we’re really interested in, so it’s safe to say that the 3 point contest will be more entertaining than the Dunk contest.
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