CHICAGO, IL 2/17/2020 12:05pm(est)
By: Kareem Rahman
I’ve been watching NBA All-Star games and NFL pro bowls for years. I’m talking about going back to the 1980’s. As a youngster it was fun to see all of my favorite players competing in the same game. As I got a little older, I began to realize that All-Star games and pro bowls were some really shitty games. Nobody plays these games at full speed, and I don’t blame them. No one wants to have their season ended in a freakin’ exhibition game. The excitement of the NBA All-Star game was mostly about seeing who would do some crazy dunks, break some ankles, or hit some deep deep three pointers. I think we stopped expecting the game to be competitive a long time ago. I think the league stopped expecting it to be competitive too. Especially when the broke away from the normal East vs. West format in place of two team captains picking from a pool of available players. Before last night’s game, you would’ve had a hard time trying to convince me that this wasn’t one of the dumbest things ever invented. Especially after seeing the players each team picked. Lebron picked all the players with flair. Fancy high flying ballers, incredible ball handlers, and great deep shooters. Basically all of the people the crowd came to see. Anthony Davis, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, etc. etc. etc. Giannis Antetokounmpo’s team was almost the complete opposite. He had hard nose hustle kind of guys on his squad. Kyle Lowry, Jimmy Butler, etc. etc. etc. Surely this game was set up to be a blowout, and not even a very entertaining one, right? Wrong!
Everything about the new format bothered me. Especially the fact that each quarter of play was an individual game that started at 0-0. But the scores from each quarter would still be added to the final tally. I thought that was pretty stupid. The first quarter went to team Giannis, 53-41. The second quarter went to team Lebron 51-30. The third quarter was a tie. But team Giannis was down 8-points overall. Leaving the 4th quarter as the one for all the marbles. The winner of each quarter earned $100,000 for their captain’s charity. The beneficiaries of those charity’s were in the crowd cheering for the team that represented them. That was actually a pretty dope sight to see. Both charities got $100,000 apiece for their teams winning the first and second quarter. The $100,000 from the 3rd quarter would be carried over to the 4th quarter prize, plus the final game winner prize. Meaning the final quarter was worth $300,000 to one of these charities! And that was when the ghost of Kobe Bryant entered the building! Listen man, I don’t know how to describe it, but these guys were out there playing like this was game-7 of the NBA finals! Even from home I could feel the pressure on the players as they took each critical possession. You could see the intensity turn all the way up on the defensive end. Guys elbowing one another, fighting for rebounds, arguing calls with the refs, taking charges! This sh*t was insane! I’ve never seen anything like this in an all-star game, but like everyone kept saying…KOBE REALLY WOULD’VE ENJOYED THIS SH*T! The final score of the game is not as important as what I saw in that 4th quarter of play. With Kobe Bryant’s name on that MVP trophy, I suspect we might see something like this every year going forward. These dudes really wanted to win this game! All of the best players in the world going at each other like this was an amazing thing to see! Anyway, the rules stated the game would end when one team reached the target score. That score was 157. Anthony Davis won the game for team Lebron at the free throw line. Kawhi Leonard took home the Kobe Bryant MVP Trophy. And I think every fan in the building and those of us watching on television would agree that we were thoroughly entertained by the 2020 NBA All-Star Game. The NBA really did a great job with this one. Now we’re just waiting to see how you are going to make your “all-star” game better NFL?
NAYZE MEDIA 