It's not the basketball that's broken

NBA All-Star needs more All-Stars and less of everything else.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Harlequin; Paul Cezanne; 1888-90

The best thing that happened All-Star Weekend was Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama getting disqualified from the Kia Skills Challenge for trying to bend the rules in their favor by just chucking the balls instead of trying to hit shots. This is cinema.

Incredible strategy. The boos and the thumbs down from Donovan Mitchell were well-earned and well worth it.

Some big cheese at the NBA almost immediately disqualified them, and pulled out some flavor of rule sheet to show them that competitors could only move on after three “valid” shots at each station (we can find a judge to rule those shots valid) … and then chased Allie LaForce away from trying to interview the Spurs in the wake of the controversy.

This was the item that broke me for the rest of All-Star Saturday: the NBA was denying its own state media (for all intents and purposes) access to discuss the failed strategy with the nefarious actors. You can see the dude telling LaForce “we’re not doing this” as she tries to slide in for an interview as Kevin Harlan is imploring her live on air to get to the bottom of it. Later, after LaForce interviews another team, Harlan is still begging her on mic to interview CP3 and she says that “Dana” told her no. WHO IS DANA? I mean, I did some googling and I think I know who Dana is, it’s pretty easy to put this together, but I’m not going to do that right now.

Anyways, the NBA treating the Spurs’ genius but foolhardy gambit like it’s a damn state secret and an affront to the sanctity of the Kia née Taco Bell Skills Challenge is an incredible window into how little the NBA understands what people want out of All-Star Weekend.

Why else would the league that is so pissed off about players not taking the main event seriously interrupt the main event with a MrBeast skit involving one of the All-Stars losing a shooting contest to a local teenager, a (good) “halftime” performance, a long in-game tribute to the NBA on TNT crew and multiple Kevin Hart appearances?

Why aren’t you ungrateful players trying hard? Also, please react as Kevin Hart insults you over the public address right before tip-off as we have the camera trained on you.