Despite the NBA’s best efforts over the last decade to juice up its All-Star Game to a vague level of competitiveness and credibility, it’s hard to see the league’s newest gimmick generating significantly different results this weekend than the Elam Ending or having LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo drafting the teams.
If that’s the case, NBA commissioner Adam Silver will likely see it as a failure. He has made it clear he wants the All-Star Game to be something other than a glorified pickup run, and the league hopes that this year’s format — dividing players into four teams and having a first-to-40 tournament — will be more satisfying for fans in the arena and more attractive for those watching on television.
But the real problem with the All-Star Game is not something the NBA can fix with a new format, or even shoveling money into the bank accounts of the players.
The problem is us. Or, to be more precise, the way our collective consumption of the NBA has evolved. What’s the point of an All-Star Game when you can get one every morning in a 10-minute YouTube clip that gives you all the best parts of the NBA, cuts out all the boring bits and is delivered to your phone to watch at your convenience?
How many people under age 30 do you know who will sit in front of a television and watch a 2½-hour NBA game?
For that generation, it’s almost unthinkable. Sure, the allure of being in the arena and feeling the action in person hasn’t changed much over the generations. But if you ask a teenager these days if they’re going to watch a game, the typical response is: “Why would I? I’ll just watch the highlights later.”
Nobody understands this phenomenon better than the league itself. During the NBA Cup, Silver gave an interview to a handful of media outlets where he expressly disassociated the league’s sagging television ratings from the league’s cultural reach.
“We’re at a point where our social media audience is at the highest of any league and continuing to grow exponentially,” he said, according to The Athletic. “So it’s not a lack of interest in this game.”
Silver is right. No matter what the ratings say — and clearly the NFL overwhelms everyone in that department — the NBA is unquestionably the most potent cultural force in American sports. And it’s not limited to this country. Walk through any city in Europe or Asia these days, and the number of young people you’ll see wearing NBA merchandise dwarfs any of our other sporting exports.
But a huge part of what makes the NBA so popular these days is also what makes the All-Star Game so superfluous.
Just consider for a moment that the NBA’s official 13-minute highlight package of the Los Angeles Lakers game against the Utah Jazz from Monday night has 3 million views on YouTube. Not to mention millions more views on copycat highlight channels, highlights that specifically tracked Luka Doncic’s debut and highlights of every other game played in the NBA that night.
That is a staggering number of people who, every day, are consuming professional basketball primarily — if not exclusively — through games that are cut down to mostly slam dunks, fast breaks and 3-pointers. Every now and then, they might throw in a good defensive play, too.
It’s a great way to understand what happened in an NBA game without having to invest more than two hours watching one. But it’s also, in a way, corrosive to people’s expectations of what the experience of watching sports is supposed to be.
For those of us who grew up before there was Internet access in nearly every home, being a fan meant investing in all of it — the good nights, the bad nights, the fouls, the timeouts, the stretches of missed shots, the commercials and all the rest of it along with whatever magic Michael Jordan was producing for the Chicago Bulls.
The NBA All-Star Game was special precisely because it stood out from the trudgery of the 82-game regular season. It was just all the good parts and the great players turning their routine talents into an endless series of highlights. That’s the only thing about it that was ever inherently great — not that the All-Star Game had some existential meaning or that players were super competitive in that environment, but because it was different.
Now, as the league’s TV ratings slide but its social media reach explodes through a never-ending stream of easily consumable highlights, there is no way to ‘fix’ the All-Star Game because it would require a return to exclusivity that the NBA knows would be bad for business. Among all the great things the league has done over the last 15 years, nothing has been more transformative for its brand and popularity than embracing social media, new media and making sure the talents of its players are seen across the globe.
As much as that mentality helps the NBA for 364 days a year, it will crush it Sunday. Why would any fan get excited about an All-Star Game when they see one every night?
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken on social media @DanWolken