When I first saw the final score to the 2016 NBA All-Star Game, I thought that I was looking at a screen capture for like a video game or something. Like when sports pundits are having a slow news day, so they do fluffy shit like video game simulations of upcoming real-life sporting events, just so they can have something to talk about. I didn’t realize that the 196 points that the Western Conference All-Stars put up in their 196-173 win over the East, was actually reality.
Name an NBA video game of the 90s; NBA Jam, Tecmo NBA, EA’s NBA Live 94-98. I was pretty good at all of those games.
But scoring 196 points in any of them required some pretty exceptional circumstances in order to pull off, and most certainly not as likely against human opponents. Like NBA Jam would require the perma-fire code and use of Detlef Schrempf to rain three pointers to run up the score. And in Tecmo or Live, I’d most certainly have to set the games to play actual 12 minute quarters, and probably turn fouls off, so I could clobber the AI opponents, steal the ball and score at will. Even with these kinds of conditions, scoring nearly 200 points was never that easy of a feat. In a video game.
Yet, here we have in reality, a game which saw a score four points shy of 200 go up.
Obviously, the basketball term “illegal defense” has found a new definition.
I get that the All-Star Game has always traditionally been lax, and an exhibition where fans are kind of supposed to get a little bit of razzle-dazzle with the NBA’s “elite” taking the court, and defense takes a back seat for some highlights to occur. But still, to have a game in which the West scored 50+ in three quarters is mind boggling. It’s almost as if the the teams took turns at getting a shot with no defense, and if they made it fine, but if they gave up the rebound it was the other team’s turn.
Clearly, there’s no pride in stuffing a guy going up for a dunk, swatting a layup into the court-side seats, or that perfectly timed poke when a ball-handler is going for a cross-up, and the ball squirts out of the other side for the textbook steal.
It’s almost to a point where there should be a separate All-Star Game for defensive stalwarts or something, because if stellar defenders aren’t ever going to get any love, then defenders will cease to exist, and the NBA will become even more insufferably terrible to watch as players forget how to play defense, and the final scores every night really do end up looking like NBA Jam.
Naturally, I was curious to see how the point distribution went in a such offensive explosion, and what I noticed that was quite curious was that among the starting players for each squad, none of them were centers or power-forwards. There were 4s and 5s on each roster, but they were all reserves. It must really suck to be a big man in the NBA now, because clearly big bodies and defensive presences are not recognized much less appreciated anymore, and considering starting rosters are solely fan-voted, it’s the fans that are failing to recognize it all.
The lack of defense meant that there were hardly any fouls, and with hardly any fouls, there were hardly any free throws. In fact, the West had just one player attempt any free throws at all, and the game in its entirety had but just seven free throws attempted. And to no surprise at all, only 4/7 were converted, for a Shaq-like 57% success rate.
It’s funny, because an old adage in all sports is that defense wins championships, but if it’s such an important skill, why is all so completely ignored and basically discouraged, in the All-Star event that’s supposed to showcase the most talented players in a league? My snide side says it’s because glam and showing off are fun and recreational, but defense is construed as work and difficult, and nobody likes doing difficult work.
Honestly, I’d love to see a defensive All-Star game where teams get additional points for steals, blocks and defensive rebounds, on top of trying to score baskets. There’d probably be way more highlights and posterized moments when defenders are actually trying to contest and get up in the air to try and block a would be dunker, and probably give fans more reason to OHHHHHH regardless of what happens next.
