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All-Star Saturday Night has the potential to be great, but the musical performances and down time make it nearly unbearable |
All-Star Saturday Night, frankly, sucks so let's fix it! With this comprehensive and consolidated list, I will attempt to highlight the (many) major problems with Saturday Night's festivities and events. Onward!:
1. Ban Nick Cannon from all future All-Star weekends
I know he's married to Mariah Carey and all, but I'm not sure the NBA could have picked a worse host that Nick Cannon. He cut off the players constantly, seemed to not know anything about basketball at all, and wore one of the most ridiculous get-ups of clothes for a nationally-televised event that I have ever seen. Didn't add anything to Saturday Night, but took A LOT out of it.
2. Let Shaq and Charles Barkley host
Get rid of Cannon, and make the atmosphere of the events more laid back with an awards-show-type set-up and aura. Shaq and Sir Charles clearly have interesting TV presence and would be great at openly roasting the players and making funny observations in between events. Would make for great, and interesting, TV for sure.
3. Replace Shooting Stars with an Old-Timer's Game
They have Old-Timers' Games in baseball, why not in basketball too? We could see Shaq post up on Charles Barkley like it's the 1990s all over again as Jalen Rose and Peja Stojakovic set up in the corners for open threes. Personal favorite of all my changes.
4. Add Halfcourt Knockout as an event
Talk about fun. Give five All-Stars three outs apiece and tell them to do whatever it takes to not get knocked out. $100K prize to the player that wins. Talk about something that NBAers would get competitive over and would try to hard to best each other in for bragging rights alone.
5. Go back to old version of every-player-for-himself scoring
The whole scoring-by-conferences thing is ridiculously stupid and defeats the whole purpose of these individual events. If they are competed in by individual players, they should also be scored by individual players as well.
6. Suspend (healthy) star players for not participating
Way, way, way overdue. The famous Dunk Contests of years' past were when stars like Michael Jordan and Vince Carter were involved in them. Just imagine how good a LeBron, Dwight, Iguodala, Kobe, Durant, and Blake Griffin dunk contest would be?
There you go. Six relatively easy and comprehensive ways to fix All-Star Saturday Night. Leave your own ideas and thoughts on mine in the comments below. If we stick together, we can make Saturday Night not awful.
